Guidelines for Reporting Health Research

Guidelines for Reporting Health Research is a practical guide to choosing and correctly applying the appropriate guidelines when reporting health research to ensure clear, transparent, and useful reports.

This new title begins with an introduction to reporting guidelines and an overview of the importance of transparent reporting, the characteristics of good guidelines, and how to use reporting guidelines effectively in reporting health research. This hands-on manual also describes over a dozen internationally recognised published guidelines such as CONSORT, STROBE, PRISMA and STARD in a clear and easy to understand format. It aims to help researchers choose and use the correct guidelines for reporting their research, and to produce more completely and transparently reported papers which will help to ensure reports are more useful and are not misleading.

Written by the authors of health research reporting guidelines, in association with the EQUATOR (Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of health Research) Network, Guidelines for Reporting Health Research is a helpful guide to producing publishable research. It will be a valuable resource for researchers in their role as authors and also an important reference for editors and peer reviewers.

List of Contributors

Foreword
Drummond Rennie

Preface

Part 1

1 Importance of transparent reporting of health research
Douglas G. Altman and David Moher

2 How to develop a reporting guideline
David Moher, Douglas G. Altman, Kenneth F. Schulz, and Iveta Simera

3 Characteristics of available reporting guidelines
David Moher, Kenneth F. Schulz, Douglas G. Altman, John Hoey, Jeremy Grimshaw, Donald Miller, Dugald Seely, Iveta Simera, Margaret Sampson, Laura Weeks, and Mary Ocampo

4 Using reporting guidelines effectively to ensure good reporting of health research
Douglas G. Altman and Iveta Simera

5 Ambiguities and confusions between reporting and conduct
Kenneth F. Schulz, David Moher, Douglas G. Altman

6 The EQUATOR Network: helping to achieve high standards in the reporting of health research studies
Iveta Simera, Allison Hirst, and Douglas G. Altman

Part 2

7 SPIRIT (Standard Protocol Items: Recommendations for Interventional Trials)
David Moher and An-Wen Chan

8 CONSORT for abstracts
Sally Hopewell and Mike Clarke

9 CONSORT
Douglas G. Altman, David Moher and Kenneth F. Schulz

10 CONSORT extension for better reporting of harms
John P.A. Ioannidis

11 CONSORT for nonpharmacologic treatments
Isabelle Boutron and Philippe Ravaud

12 CONSORT for pragmatic trials (Practihc)
Merrick Zwarenstein

13 CONSORT for cluster randomized trials
Diana R. Elbourne, Marion K. Campbell, Gilda Piaggio and Douglas G. Altman

14 CONSORT for non-inferiority and equivalence trials
Gilda Piaggio, Diana Elbourne, and Douglas G. Altman

15 STRICTA (STandards for Reporting Interventions in Clinical Trials of Acupuncture)
Hugh MacPherson

16 TREND (Transparent Reporting of Evaluations with Non-randomized Designs)
Don C. Des Jarlais

17 STROBE (STrengthening the Reporting of Observational studies in Epidemiology)
Myriam Cevallos and Matthias Egger

18 STREGA (Strengthening the Reporting of Genetic Associations)
Julian Little

19 STARD (STAndards for Reporting of Diagnostic Accuracy studies)
Patrick M.M. Bossuyt

20 SURGE (The SUrvey Reporting GuidelinE)
Jeremy Grimshaw

21 COREQ (Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Studies)
Andrew Booth, Karin Hannes, Angela Harden, Jane Noyes, and Janet Harris for the Cochrane Collaboration Qualitative Research Methods Group

22 SQUIRE (Standards for Quality Improvement Reporting Excellence)
Samuel J. Huber, Greg Ogrinc and Frank Davidoff

23 REMARK (REporting recommendations for tumour MARKer prognostic studies)
Douglas G. Altman, Lisa M. McShane, Willi Sauerbrei, Sheila E. Taube, and Margaret M. Cavenagh

24 PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses)
David Moher, Douglas G. Altman and Jennifer Tetzlaff

Part 3

25 SAMPL (the Statistical Analyses and Methods in the Published Literature guidelines)
Thomas A. Lang and Douglas G. Altman

26 Guidelines for presenting tables and figures in scientific manuscripts
David L. Schriger

27 Documenting Clinical and Laboratory Images in Publications: the CLIP Principles
Thomas A. Lang, Cassandra Talerico, and George C. M. Siontis

28 Reporting guidelines for health economic evaluations: BMJ guidelines for authors and peer reviewers of economic submissions
Andrew H. Briggs and Michael F. Drummond

Part 4

29 Establishing a coherent reporting guidelines policy in health journals
Jason L. Roberts, Timothy T. Houle, Elizabeth W. Loder, Donald B. Penzien, Dana P. Turner and John F. Rothrock

Index

"Written by the original guideline authors, the book essentially presents and summarizes the various research reporting guidelines developed over the years in an effort to promote best practices in research reporting." (Springer Nature, 2016)

"In Guidelines for Reporting Health Research: A User�s Manual, the book�s editors, in association with the EQUATOR (Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of health Research) network (www.equator-network.org) and over 60 individual contributors, present a collection of respected and commonly used guidelines for reporting health research, with the purpose of increasing the clarity, completeness, and transparency of reported research. This book is aimed at a range of professions and roles within the medical and academic fields, including authors, editors, peer reviewers, and funders. From a medical writing perspective, it provides some fundamental background knowledge on the necessity, generation and application of guidelines for publishing research...

Overall this book provides a valuable resource for authors, editors, peer reviewers, and funders to ensure the appropriate guidelines are chosen and correctly applied. I would highly recommend it to any medical writer looking to broaden their knowledge of how best to report health research.(Medical Writing, Dec 2016)

Matthias Egger is professor of epidemiology and public health at the University of Bern in Switzerland, as well as professor of clinical epidemiology at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom.

George Davey-Smith is the editor of Systematic Reviews in Health Care: Meta-Analysis in Context, 2nd Edition, published by Wiley.

Douglas G. Altman, Centre for Statistics in Medicine, University of Oxford and EQUATOR Network, Oxford, UK.

Guidelines for Reporting Health Research is a practical guide to choosing and correctly applying the appropriate guidelines when reporting health research to ensure clear, transparent, and useful reports.

This new title begins with an introduction to reporting guidelines and an overview of the importance of transparent reporting, the characteristics of good guidelines, and how to use reporting guidelines effectively in reporting health research. This hands-on manual also describes over a dozen internationally recognised published guidelines such as CONSORT, STROBE, PRISMA and STARD in a clear and easy to understand format. It aims to help researchers choose and use the correct guidelines for reporting their research, and to produce more completely and transparently reported papers which will help to ensure reports are more useful and are not misleading.

Written by the authors of health research reporting guidelines, in association with the EQUATOR (Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of health Research) Network, Guidelines for Reporting Health Research is a helpful guide to producing publishable research. It will be a valuable resource for researchers in their role as authors and also an important reference for editors and peer reviewers.