Back to Search
Start Over
An instrument to assess the statistical intensity of medical research papers
- Source :
- PLoS ONE, PLoS ONE, Vol 12, Iss 10, p e0186882 (2017)
- Publication Year :
- 2017
- Publisher :
- Public Library of Science, 2017.
-
Abstract
- Background There is widespread evidence that statistical methods play an important role in original research articles, especially in medical research. The evaluation of statistical methods and reporting in journals suffers from a lack of standardized methods for assessing the use of statistics. The objective of this study was to develop and evaluate an instrument to assess the statistical intensity in research articles in a standardized way. Methods A checklist-type measure scale was developed by selecting and refining items from previous reports about the statistical contents of medical journal articles and from published guidelines for statistical reporting. A total of 840 original medical research articles that were published between 2007–2015 in 16 journals were evaluated to test the scoring instrument. The total sum of all items was used to assess the intensity between sub-fields and journals. Inter-rater agreement was examined using a random sample of 40 articles. Four raters read and evaluated the selected articles using the developed instrument. Results The scale consisted of 66 items. The total summary score adequately discriminated between research articles according to their study design characteristics. The new instrument could also discriminate between journals according to their statistical intensity. The inter-observer agreement measured by the ICC was 0.88 between all four raters. Individual item analysis showed very high agreement between the rater pairs, the percentage agreement ranged from 91.7% to 95.2%. Conclusions A reliable and applicable instrument for evaluating the statistical intensity in research papers was developed. It is a helpful tool for comparing the statistical intensity between sub-fields and journals. The novel instrument may be applied in manuscript peer review to identify papers in need of additional statistical review.
- Subjects :
- medicine.medical_specialty
Research Validity
Biomedical Research
Medical Journals
Epidemiology
MEDLINE
lcsh:Medicine
030204 cardiovascular system & hematology
Individual item
Research and Analysis Methods
Original research
Design characteristics
03 medical and health sciences
0302 clinical medicine
Mathematical and Statistical Techniques
Epidemiological Statistics
Medicine and Health Sciences
Medicine
Medical physics
030212 general & internal medicine
Medical journal
Statistical Methods
lcsh:Science
Scientific Publishing
Observer Variation
Publishing
Multidisciplinary
business.industry
lcsh:R
Research Assessment
Medical research
Test (assessment)
Intensity (physics)
Physical Sciences
Epidemiological Methods and Statistics
lcsh:Q
business
Medical Humanities
Mathematics
Statistics (Mathematics)
Research Article
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 19326203
- Volume :
- 12
- Issue :
- 10
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- PLoS ONE
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....83957070e8e19568218eacc678232f58