Application of an adapted PRECIS-2 instrument to assess efficacy- and effectiveness-study designs in a systematic review of intervention studies of the hepatitis C virus-care continuum among people who use drugs
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Introduction: Systematic reviews and meta-analyses examining intervention studies may need to categorize studies by the degree to which they reflect efficacy or effectiveness study-design elements when reporting systematic reviews and meta-analysis results. Materials and methods: We identified reports presenting data from intervention studies eligible for evaluation with an adapted PRECIS-II instrument as part of a larger systematic review of the hepatitis C virus (HCV)-care continuum among people who used drugs. We applied the instrument to score reports examining any of the HCV-care-continuum steps of testing, linkage to care, and treatment on an efficacy–effectiveness spectrum. Composite scores are presented in tabular format and in stacked dot plots. Results: The adapted PRECIS-II instrument was applied to 37 unique reports that presented data on 51 HCV-care-continuum outcomes of testing (n=16), linkage to care (n=12), and treatment (n=23). Totals of 28, six, and three reports had been produced on one, two, or all three outcomes, respectively. Ten and eight studies described themselves as having efficacy or effectiveness designs, respectively; 33 did not specify. PRECIS-II composite scores for reports produced on testing, linkage to care, and treatment ranged widely: 1.22–5. Composite scores for reports examining HCV treatment indicated study designs that tended toward effectiveness (3.35), but those examining testing (3.85) or linkage (3.8) had more effectiveness-study designs ( P =0.003, P =0.013, respectively). Conclusion: Reviewed reports varied widely in their use of efficacy/effectiveness-study designs, suggesting that systematic reviews and meta-analyses need to consider heterogeneity in efficacy/effectiveness study design in analyses. Most reports tended modestly toward having effectiveness designs, and treatment studies contained the most elements of efficacy-study designs. When assessing large numbers of reports with the PRECIS-II instrument, stacked dot plots may aid visually in depicting the range of scores. This review suggests that studies of the effectiveness of HCV treatment of people who use drugs at a population level is a research gap. Keywords: efficacy, effectiveness, HCV-care continuum, systematic review and meta-analysis, evidence base
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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 | 0.348 | 0.510 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.008 | 0.031 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.027 | 0.028 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.006 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.010 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.008 | 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".