Guidelines for Reporting Health Research A User's Manual

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

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.