Читать книгу Understanding Clinical Papers - David Bowers - Страница 28

Readers of research want to know that the material in front of them is fairly and comprehensively described, preferably setting out what was planned, as well as what was done. We all hope that researchers will tell us in a thorough way what their question was, how the study planned to answer that question, how it was undertaken, what was found, and that they will give us a fair interpretation of what it all means – particularly in relation to the limitations of the design and its execution, and how generalizable the findings are likely to be. As a commendable attempt to render it more likely that we shall read research that attains these standards, people have been trying in recent years to set out guidance for the reporting of research. Researchers have got together with journal editors, and research funders and others, to draw up guidelines that are endorsed by journals as a standard of excellence for reporting. The best‐known guidelines, and the first to be widely adopted by journals and researchers, are the CONSORT guidelines for the reporting of clinical trials, discussed in the next chapter. The guidelines of interest for reporting observational analytic studies are the STROBE guidelines: STROBE stands for STrengthening the Reporting of OBservational studies in Epidemiology . The guidance covers what should be set out in cohort analytic studies, case–control studies and analytic cross‐sectional studies. Clinical research papers will sometimes allude to conformity with the STROBE guidelines and, in general, where they do so the account should adequately cover all of the components referred to above. Some journals will insist that all authors apply the guidelines and submit a checklist of the items; the checklist is not usually published but is used by the peer reviewers and editors.