Better reporting quality for improved pediatric investigation: Application of health research reporting guidelines

Abstract

Clinical research on the accuracy of diagnostic tests, the power of prognostic markers, and the efficacy and safety of interventions are the cornerstone of evidence-based health care. 1 Transparency and sufficient reporting are important for conveying research findings to the public, practitioners, and students in medicine because insufficient reporting of results would hinder assessment for a study's strengths and weaknesses and thus hamper integration of evidence, even from well-conducted research. 2 However, the reporting quality of articles in most healthcare journals remains inadequate. [3][4][5][6] Many publications lack clarity, transparency, and completeness on how the authors actually carry out their research. Therefore, the validity of research cannot be accurately evaluated. An example of such situation is that determining whether randomization is sufficient is difficult if authors do not report important information (eg, generation of random sequences and the method of random concealment in therapeutic assessment studies). 7 Reviewers and readers will not make an information-based assessment on research quality and the risk of bias if the reporting quality is insufficient as well as reviewers and readers could not get linkage to a research protocol. was found in the research in a clear and transparent manner. In particular, these guidelines can emphasize the issues that might introduce bias to the research. Work groups that developed types of reporting guidelines have declared that reporting guidelines are recommended for researchers, but not to be demanded. However, researchers can improve the research design by referring to the checklists of a reporting guideline. Moreover, we must be aware that reporting guidelines do not recommend how specific studies should be designed, ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

A new column in this journal – Forum on Clinical Investigation

“…We have published several articles on methodology of clinical investigation in this journal during the past 5 years (Table 1 ). 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 These may be among the most important parts of the contents of this new column's articles. Readers and authors are very welcome to ask questions and provide answers, comments, and suggestions about these articles or any issues related to clinical studies.…”