Department of Epidemiology, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, New York, NY, USA.
Department of Epidemiology, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, New York, NY, USA.
J Clin Epidemiol. 2019 Oct;114:125-132. doi: 10.1016/j.jclinepi.2019.06.011. Epub 2019 Jun 20.
Epidemiologic and clinical research papers often describe the study sample in the first table. If well-executed, this "Table 1" can illuminate potential threats to internal and external validity. However, little guidance exists on best practices for designing a Table 1, especially for complex study designs and analyses. We aimed to summarize and extend the literature related to reporting descriptive statistics.
In consultation with existing guidelines, we synthesized and developed reporting recommendations driven by study design and focused on transparency related to potential threats to internal and external validity.
We describe a basic structure for Table 1 and discuss simple modifications in terms of columns, rows, and cells to enhance a reader's ability to judge both internal and external validity. We further highlight several analytic complexities common in epidemiologic research (missing data, sample weights, clustered data, and interaction) and describe possible variations to Table 1 to maintain and add clarity about study validity in light of these issues. We discuss considerations and tradeoffs in Table 1 related to breadth and comprehensiveness vs. parsimony and reader-friendliness.
We anticipate that our work will guide authors considering layouts for Table 1, with attention to the reader's perspective.
流行病学和临床研究论文通常在第一表中描述研究样本。如果执行得当，这个“表 1”可以阐明对内外部有效性的潜在威胁。然而，对于复杂的研究设计和分析，几乎没有关于设计表 1 的最佳实践的指导。我们旨在总结和扩展与报告描述性统计数据相关的文献。
我们在与现有指南协商的基础上，综合并制定了基于研究设计的报告建议，并重点关注与对内外部有效性的潜在威胁相关的透明度。
我们描述了表 1 的基本结构，并讨论了列、行和单元格的简单修改，以增强读者判断内外部有效性的能力。我们进一步强调了流行病学研究中常见的几种分析复杂性（缺失数据、样本权重、聚类数据和交互作用），并描述了可能的变化，以在考虑这些问题时保持和增加对研究有效性的清晰性。我们讨论了表 1 中与广度和全面性与简约和读者友好性相关的考虑因素和权衡。
我们预计我们的工作将指导考虑表 1 布局的作者，关注读者的视角。
