Ahmadi Ali, Soori Hamid
Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Shahrekord University of Medical Sciences, Shahrekord, Iran.
Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
J Renal Inj Prev. 2015 Mar 1;4(1):4-8. doi: 10.12861/jrip.2015.02. eCollection 2015.
Quality of articles' methodology is one of the important factors which is considered by researchers.
This study was conducted to determine statistical guidelines on promotion of methodology's quality in the articles concerning medical sciences, particularly nephrology, to assist authors and reviewers.
This study is a systematic review. Initially, the keywords "Epidemiologic Methods/analysis" [Mesh] OR "Epidemiologic Methods/epidemiology" and "reporting" were selected in Medline database. Then, reliable databases were searched for relevant publications. Being relevant, containing viewpoints, and recommending statistical guidelines as well as approval of at least two of the three examiners of articles were determined as the inclusion criteria into the study.
Two hundred relevant articles were retrieved. Thirty-two articles met the inclusion criteria. By the examined articles, 30 applied points have determinative role for improving and promoting quality of articles methodology. Of the important points, introducing and describing target community and statistical population, mentioning article title, introducing independent and dependent variables as well as confounders, reporting sample size for subgroups and the whole study, summarizing the data according to their statistical distribution (reporting mean and standard deviation for data with normal distribution), reporting the type of rate (incidence, survival), ratio (odds, hazard) or risk (absolute, relative, difference) with 95% CI and the used software could be mentioned.
The most important factors contributing greatly to the quality of articles' methodology on nephrology were reported in the present study. Applying these factors by articles authors and reviewers could lead to improve articles' and journals' quality. In addition, use of the findings of the present study in articles' materials and methods could avoid research errors.
文章方法学质量是研究人员考虑的重要因素之一。
本研究旨在确定关于提升医学科学尤其是肾脏病学相关文章方法学质量的统计指南，以协助作者和审稿人。
本研究为系统评价。首先，在Medline数据库中选择关键词“流行病学方法/分析”[医学主题词]或“流行病学方法/流行病学”以及“报告”。然后，在可靠数据库中检索相关出版物。相关性、包含观点、推荐统计指南以及至少得到三位文章审查者中两位的认可被确定为纳入本研究的标准。
检索到200篇相关文章。32篇文章符合纳入标准。通过审查的文章，30个应用要点对提高和提升文章方法学质量具有决定性作用。其中要点包括介绍和描述目标群体及统计总体、提及文章标题、介绍自变量、因变量以及混杂因素、报告亚组和整个研究的样本量、根据数据的统计分布汇总数据（对于正态分布的数据报告均值和标准差）、报告率（发病率、生存率）、比值（比值比、风险比）或风险（绝对风险、相对风险、风险差）的类型并给出95%置信区间以及所使用的软件。
本研究报告了对肾脏病学文章方法学质量有重大贡献的最重要因素。文章作者和审稿人应用这些因素可提高文章和期刊质量。此外，将本研究结果用于文章的材料和方法部分可避免研究错误。
