IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0151818.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Cluster Randomised Trials in Cochrane Reviews: Evaluation of Methodological and Reporting Practice

Author

Listed:
  • Marty Richardson
  • Paul Garner
  • Sarah Donegan

Abstract

Objective: Systematic reviews can include cluster-randomised controlled trials (C-RCTs), which require different analysis compared with standard individual-randomised controlled trials. However, it is not known whether review authors follow the methodological and reporting guidance when including these trials. The aim of this study was to assess the methodological and reporting practice of Cochrane reviews that included C-RCTs against criteria developed from existing guidance. Methods: Criteria were developed, based on methodological literature and personal experience supervising review production and quality. Criteria were grouped into four themes: identifying, reporting, assessing risk of bias, and analysing C-RCTs. The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews was searched (2nd December 2013), and the 50 most recent reviews that included C-RCTs were retrieved. Each review was then assessed using the criteria. Results: The 50 reviews we identified were published by 26 Cochrane Review Groups between June 2013 and November 2013. For identifying C-RCTs, only 56% identified that C-RCTs were eligible for inclusion in the review in the eligibility criteria. For reporting C-RCTs, only eight (24%) of the 33 reviews reported the method of cluster adjustment for their included C-RCTs. For assessing risk of bias, only one review assessed all five C-RCT-specific risk-of-bias criteria. For analysing C-RCTs, of the 27 reviews that presented unadjusted data, only nine (33%) provided a warning that confidence intervals may be artificially narrow. Of the 34 reviews that reported data from unadjusted C-RCTs, only 13 (38%) excluded the unadjusted results from the meta-analyses. Conclusions: The methodological and reporting practices in Cochrane reviews incorporating C-RCTs could be greatly improved, particularly with regard to analyses. Criteria developed as part of the current study could be used by review authors or editors to identify errors and improve the quality of published systematic reviews incorporating C-RCTs.

Suggested Citation

  • Marty Richardson & Paul Garner & Sarah Donegan, 2016. "Cluster Randomised Trials in Cochrane Reviews: Evaluation of Methodological and Reporting Practice," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(3), pages 1-14, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0151818
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0151818
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0151818
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0151818&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0151818?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Claire Godard-Sebillotte & Mélanie Le Berre & Tibor Schuster & Miguel Trottier & Isabelle Vedel, 2019. "Impact of health service interventions on acute hospital use in community-dwelling persons with dementia: A systematic literature review and meta-analysis," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(6), pages 1-18, June.
    2. Zhongheng Zhang & Sven Van Poucke, 2017. "Citations for Randomized Controlled Trials in Sepsis Literature: The Halo Effect Caused by Journal Impact Factor," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(1), pages 1-13, January.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0151818. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.