The influence of CONSORT on the quality of reporting of randomised controlled trials: an updated review
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) Statement was developed in response to concerns about the quality of reporting of randomized controlled trials (RCTs). The checklist is an evidence-based minimum set of recommendations for reporting RCTs, intended to facilitate the complete and transparent reporting of RCTs and aid in their critical appraisal and interpretation. In 2006, Plint and colleagues published a systematic review examining the effectiveness of CONSORT for improving the reporting of RCTs in journals that have formally endorsed the guidance (i.e. at minimum recommend that authors use CONSORT) [ 1 ]. Despite poor methodology of some included studies, use of CONSORT was found to be associated with improvement in the quality of reporting of RCTs. To update Plint et al.’s systematic review assessing the influence of the CONSORT Statement’s checklist (2001) on the quality of reporting of RCTs. Conventional systematic review methods employed in the original review by Plint et al. have been implemented. The search for new studies spanned August 2005 – March 2010. Two independent reviewers screened studies for eligibility; extraction and validity assessment of studies were conducted by a single reviewer and a second reviewer performed verification. Reporting quality was assessed by comparing the proportion of RCTs adhering to individual CONSORT items or a total sum score between comparison groups. Of 2896 possibly relevant studies, 53 reports of 50 quasi-experimental studies have been included, compared to 8 in the earlier review. In total these studies assessed adherence to CONSORT in 16,222 RCTs. When comparing reporting in RCTs of CONSORT endorsing journals with CONSORT non-endorsing journals; 25 of 27 outcomes yield higher relative reporting of these items in endorsing journals, of which 7 were statistically significant. The largest positive effect, across 16 studies, showed that reporting of allocation concealment was 81% greater in CONSORT endorsing journals (RR = 1.81, 95%CI 1.37 to 2.40). There is no evidence to suggest that CONSORT endorsement has a detrimental influence on the quality of reporting of RCTs.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.530 | 0.708 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.016 | 0.015 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.027 | 0.034 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.008 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.014 | 0.015 |
| Open science | 0.010 | 0.008 |
| Research integrity | 0.009 | 0.015 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; the direct Gemma label and the distilled Codex classifier agree on what is shown here.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".