Reviewer's report
Title:The quality of reporting of primary test accuracy studies in Obstetrics and
Gynaecology: application of the STARD criteria.
Version: 1Date:24 September 2010
Reviewer: Nynke Smidt
Reviewer's report:
Title manuscript: The quality of reporting of primary test accuracy studies in
Obstetrics and Gynaecology: application of the STARD criteria.
The results described in this manuscript are based on 300 diagnostic test
accuracy studies included in 10 systematic reviews which were performed in
period of 2004-2007. The authors a) evaluated the quality of reporting of the
diagnostic test accuracy studies using the STARD checklist, b) compared the
quality of reporting in studies published before and after the introduction of
STARD, c) compared the differences in the quality of reporting between studies
in obstetrics and gynaecology, d) investigated whether the quality of reporting
was associated with study size and geographical areas.
This manuscript is very close related to the manuscript ‘Methodological quality of
test accuracy studies included in systematic reviews in obstetrics and
gynaecology: sources of bias’. Both manuscripts are based on the same reviews
and studies and used the same methodology.
Minor issues not for publication
- none
Discretionary revisions (ignore or choose)
1. Background: I would remove “or outcome measure” from the following
sentence “These studies generate a comparison of the result from an index test
against an accepted reference standard or outcomes measure”.
2.Results: Figure 1 does not really show the improvement of the quality of
reporting over time. Is there another way of presenting the improvement of the
quality of reporting over time more clearly?
Minor essential revisions
3. Background: The following sentence “Previous studies have looked at the
impact of STARD in specific clinical areas with varying outcomes and the overall
quality of reporting of studies which was generally found to be poor”. Please,
would it be possible to provide more information about how poor the quality of
reporting in these reviews was described? (i.e. percentage of papers that
reported more than 50% of the STARD items properly varied in the reviews from
..percent to …percent).
4. Results: Please, would it be possible to describe the individual items of the
STARD statement completely in table 1?
Major compulsory revisions
5. Methods: Search and selection of reviews and studies: The authors decided to
evaluate the quality of reporting of diagnostic test accuracy studies in Obstetrics
and Gynaecology. Therefore they selected 10 systematic reviews performed over
the period of 2004 till 2007. It is unclear how these systematic reviews were
found (search and selection process) and why they decided to limit the
time-frame to 2004-2007. Please, would it be possible to provide a description of
the search and selection process (i.e. search strategy, selection criteria)?
Furthermore, I do not understand the sentence “These reviews were selected as
they were performed by the authors with uniform assessment of reporting
quality”. Does this mean that the assessment of the quality of reporting was
already performed by the authors of the selected reviews? (so retrospective)?
6. Results: Although the authors showed that the overall quality of reporting of
the primary diagnostic test accuracy studies have improved over time, a Pre-Post
STARD evaluation comparing studies published < 2004 with studies published #
2004 for each STARD item independently is lacking. Would it be possible to add
pre-post STARD evaluation for each individual STARD item this to table 1? By
presenting the quality of reporting of the individual STARD items, it gives a good
overview what kind of items need more attention, not only by authors, but also
reviewers and editors.
7. Results: I am wondering whether differences in the quality of reporting for each
individual item between obstetric studies and gynaecological studies can be
explained (i.e. taking into account study design (cohort vs case control studies),
studies published in journals adopting the STARD statement vs non-adopting
journals, impact factor of the journal (high vs low), geographical area of
publication, number of studies published before the publication of STARD
statement (Pre-STARD) vs after the publication of STARD statement
(Post-STARD). Maybe, authors can ask help from a statistician.
8. Results: it would be interested to see what kind of articles are included (i.e.
design characteristics (prospective or retrospective data collection, participant
sampling), what kind of journals, sample size of studies, test characteristics
(index and reference standard), target conditions, study population, setting etc.
9. Results: How many articles included a flow diagram? Has this changed over
time (Pre-STARD versus Post-STARD)? Would it be possible to investigate
whether studies including a flow chart are associated with better quality of
reporting?
10. Results: remove figure 2. Based on your analysis, there are no differences in
quality of reporting between different geographical areas. Therefore, I would not
add this figure to the manuscript. This data can also be provided in a table with
other details of the studies or described in the text.
Level of interest: An article whose findings are important to those with closely
related research interests
Quality of written English: Needs some language corrections before being
published
Statistical review: Yes, but I do not feel adequately qualified to assess the
statistics.
Declaration of competing interests:
'I declare that I have no competing interests'