Evidence-Based Toxicology Collaboration at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD 21205, United States.
Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, Lancaster, Lancashire, LA1 4YW, United Kingdom.
Toxicol Sci. 2024 Oct 1;201(2):240-253. doi: 10.1093/toxsci/kfae083.
To support the development of appraisal tools for assessing the quality of in vitro studies, we developed a method for literature-based discovery of study assessment criteria, used the method to create an item bank of assessment criteria of potential relevance to in vitro studies, and analyzed the item bank to discern and critique current approaches for appraisal of in vitro studies. We searched four research indexes and included any document that identified itself as an appraisal tool for in vitro studies, was a systematic review that included a critical appraisal step, or was a reporting checklist for in vitro studies. We abstracted, normalized, and categorized all criteria applied by the included appraisal tools to create an "item bank" database of issues relevant to the assessment of in vitro studies. The resulting item bank consists of 676 unique appraisal concepts from 67 appraisal tools. We believe this item bank is the single most comprehensive resource of its type to date, should be of high utility for future tool development exercises, and provides a robust methodology for grounding tool development in the existing literature. Although we set out to develop an item bank specifically targeting in vitro studies, we found that many of the assessment concepts we discovered are readily applicable to other study designs. Item banks can be of significant value as a resource; however, there are important challenges in developing, maintaining, and extending them of which researchers should be aware.
为了支持评估体外研究质量的评价工具的开发，我们开发了一种基于文献的研究评估标准发现方法，使用该方法创建了一个与体外研究潜在相关的评估标准项目库，并对该项目库进行了分析，以辨别和批评当前评估体外研究的方法。我们在四个研究索引中进行了搜索，并纳入了任何将自己确定为体外研究评价工具、是包含关键评估步骤的系统评价或体外研究报告清单的文件。我们对纳入的评价工具所应用的所有标准进行了抽象、标准化和分类，以创建一个与体外研究评估相关的“项目库”数据库。该项目库包含 67 个评价工具中的 676 个独特的评价概念。我们相信这个项目库是迄今为止同类项目中最全面的资源，应该对未来的工具开发练习非常有用，并为在现有文献中为工具开发提供了一个强大的方法。尽管我们着手开发专门针对体外研究的项目库，但我们发现我们发现的许多评估概念很容易适用于其他研究设计。项目库作为一种资源具有重要价值，但在开发、维护和扩展它们方面存在重要挑战，研究人员应该意识到这些挑战。
