Dragioti Elena, Dimoliatis Ioannis, Evangelou Evangelos
Department of Hygiene and Epidemiology, School of Medicine, University of Ioannina, University Campus, Ioannina, Greece.
Department of Hygiene and Epidemiology, School of Medicine, University of Ioannina, University Campus, Ioannina, Greece Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Imperial College London, London, UK.
BMJ Open. 2015 Jun 1;5(6):e007206. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2014-007206.
Psychotherapy research may suffer from factors such as a researcher's own therapy allegiance. The aim of this study was to evaluate if researcher allegiance (RA) was reported in meta-analyses and randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of psychotherapeutic treatments.
Systematic approach using meta-analyses of different types of psychotherapies.
Medline, PsycINFO and Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews.
We evaluated meta-analyses of RCTs regarding various types of psychotherapies. Meta-analyses were eligible if they included at least one RCT with RA and they were published in journals in Medline, PsycINFO and Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews with an impact factor larger than 5.
We identified 146 eligible meta-analyses that synthesised data from a total of 1198 unique RCTs. Only 25 of the meta-analyses (17.2%) reported allegiance and only 6 (4.1%) used a proper method to control its effect. Of the 1198 eligible primary RCTs, 793 (66.3%) were allegiant. Authors in 25 of these 793 RCTs (3.2%) reported their allegiance while only one study (0.2%) controlled for its effect.
The vast majority among a group of published meta-analyses and RCTs of psychotherapeutic treatments seldom reported and evaluated the allegiance effect. The results of the present study highlight a major lack of this information in meta-analyses and their included studies, though meta-analyses perform slightly better than RCTs. Stringent guidelines should be adopted by journals in order to improve reporting and attenuate possible effects of RA in future research.
心理治疗研究可能受到诸如研究者自身的治疗偏好等因素的影响。本研究的目的是评估在心理治疗的荟萃分析和随机对照试验（RCT）中是否报告了研究者偏好（RA）。
采用对不同类型心理治疗进行荟萃分析的系统方法。
医学索引数据库（Medline）、心理学文摘数据库（PsycINFO）和Cochrane系统评价数据库。
我们评估了关于各种类型心理治疗的随机对照试验的荟萃分析。如果荟萃分析至少包括一项报告了研究者偏好的随机对照试验，并且发表在医学索引数据库、心理学文摘数据库和Cochrane系统评价数据库中影响因子大于5的期刊上，则该荟萃分析符合条件。
我们确定了146项符合条件的荟萃分析，这些分析综合了总共1198项独特的随机对照试验的数据。只有25项荟萃分析（17.2%）报告了偏好，只有6项（4.1%）使用了适当的方法来控制其影响。在1198项符合条件的主要随机对照试验中，793项（66.3%）存在偏好。在这793项随机对照试验中的25项（3.2%）的作者报告了他们的偏好，而只有一项研究（0.2%）控制了其影响。
在一组已发表的心理治疗的荟萃分析和随机对照试验中，绝大多数很少报告和评估偏好效应。本研究结果突出了荟萃分析及其纳入研究中这一信息的严重缺乏，尽管荟萃分析的表现略优于随机对照试验。期刊应采用严格的指南，以改善报告情况并减弱未来研究中研究者偏好可能产生的影响。
