Quality of conduct and reporting in rapid reviews: an exploration of compliance with PRISMA and AMSTAR guidelines
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Rapid reviews are an accelerated evidence synthesis approach intended to meet the timely needs of decision-makers in healthcare settings. Quality of conduct and reporting has been described in the rapid review literature; however, no formal assessment has been carried out using available instruments. The objective of this study was to explore compliance with conduct and reporting guidelines in rapid reviews published or posted online during 2013 and 2014. METHODS: We performed a comprehensive literature search for rapid reviews using multiple bibliographic databases (e.g. PubMed, MEDLINE, EMBASE, the Cochrane Library) through December 31, 2014. Grey literature was searched thoroughly, and health technology assessment agencies were surveyed to identify additional rapid review products. Candidate reviews were assessed for inclusion using pre-specified eligibility criteria. Detailed data was collected from the included reviews on study and reporting characteristics and variables significant to rapid reviews (e.g. nomenclature, definition). We evaluated the quality of conduct and reporting of included rapid reviews using the A Measurement Tool to Assess Systematic Reviews (AMSTAR) and Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) checklists. Compliance with each checklist item was examined, and the sum of adequately reported items was used to describe overall compliance. Rapid reviews were stratified to explore differences in compliance related to publication status. The association between compliance and time to completion or length of publication was explored through univariate regression. RESULTS: Sixty-six rapid reviews were included. There were heterogeneous nomenclature, research questions and approaches to rapid reviews. Compliance with AMSTAR and PRISMA checklists was poor. Published rapid reviews were compliant with individual PRISMA items more often than unpublished reviews, but no difference was seen in AMSTAR item compliance overall. There was evidence of an association between length of publication and time to completion and the number of adequately reported PRISMA or AMSTAR items. CONCLUSIONS: Transparency and inadequate reporting are significant limitations of rapid reviews. Scientific editors, authors and producing agencies should ensure that the reporting of conduct and findings is accurate and complete. Further research may be warranted to explore reporting and conduct guidelines specific to rapid reviews and how these guidelines may be applied across the spectrum of rapid review approaches.
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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 | 0.869 | 0.935 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.011 | 0.014 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.032 | 0.047 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.006 | 0.014 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.019 | 0.019 |
| Open science | 0.011 | 0.013 |
| Research integrity | 0.008 | 0.010 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
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".