Scoping review on interventions to improve adherence to reporting guidelines in health research

Abstract

Objectives: The goal of this study is to identify, analyse and classify interventions to improve adherence to reporting guidelines in order to obtain a wide picture of how the problem of enhancing the completeness of reporting of biomedical literature has been tackled so far.

Design: Scoping review.

Search strategy: We searched the MEDLINE, EMBASE and Cochrane Library databases and conducted a grey literature search for (1) studies evaluating interventions to improve adherence to reporting guidelines in health research and (2) other types of references describing interventions that have been performed or suggested but never evaluated. The characteristics and effect of the evaluated interventions were analysed. Moreover, we explored the rationale of the interventions identified and determined the existing gaps in research on the evaluation of interventions to improve adherence to reporting guidelines.

Results: 109 references containing 31 interventions (11 evaluated) were included. These were grouped into five categories: (1) training on the use of reporting guidelines, (2) improving understanding, (3) encouraging adherence, (4) checking adherence and providing feedback, and (5) involvement of experts. Additionally, we identified lack of evaluated interventions (1) on training on the use of reporting guidelines and improving their understanding, (2) at early stages of research and (3) after the final acceptance of the manuscript.

Conclusions: This scoping review identified a wide range of strategies to improve adherence to reporting guidelines that can be taken by different stakeholders. Additional research is needed to assess the effectiveness of many of these interventions.

Keywords: adherence; completeness of reporting; knowledge synthesis; quality of reporting; reporting guidelines; scoping review.

Figure 1

PRISMA flow diagram. PRISMA, Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses.

Figure 2

Typology of interventions to improve adherence to RGs according to type of intervention and research stage. Evaluated interventions are shown in bold. CONSORT, Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials; RGs, reporting guidelines.

Figure 3

Gaps in research on the evaluation of interventions to improve adherence to RGs. Each circle represents one intervention. Variables displayed: (1) Circle size: number of studies evaluating each intervention (bigger=more studies); (2) Circle colour: study design of those studies (blue for RCTs and green for observational studies) and (3) Circle fill: kind of RG implementation (plain for checklist and stripes for bullet points and examples). Research gaps are highlighted in red. RCTs, randomised controlled trials; RGs, reporting guidelines.