Evidence of improvement in reporting quality
The broad goals of any reporting guidance are to improve the transparency and reporting of the specific design, such as 2-group parallel randomized controlled trials (RCTs) or other type of data, that is was developed for. As part of the development process, an evaluation component is essential. Otherwise asking authors, journals and editors to use and endorse the guidance (i.e., the intervention) is not warranted. Unfortunately, few reporting guides include an assessment of whether the reporting guidance achieves its intended objective, namely, improving the quality of reporting (Iveta Simera, personal communcation).
An early evaluation of the 1996 CONSORT Statement was published in JAMA (1). Here, the authors conducted a comparative before-after evaluation. Pre-CONSORT (1994) and early post-CONSORT (1998) reports (n=148) of RCTs published in three CONSORT-adopting journals (BMJ, JAMA and The Lancet) were compared to 63 reports of RCTs published in one non-CONSORT-adopting journal (New England Journal of Medicine; this journal now endorses CONSORT) during both time periods. Compared to 1994 reports of RCTs published in 1998, use of the CONSORT Statement was associated with improvements in the quality of reports of RCT.
Since then, several other evaluations have assessed the impact of using the CONSORT Statement to improve the reporting of randomized controlled trials. These studies have been summarized in a recently published systematic review (2). Here, the authors report on the results of eight such evaluations. They conclude that the use of the CONSORT Statement was associated with better reporting of RCTs. Presently the review is being updated to incorporate new CONSORT evaluations.
For more information, references of literature on the impact of CONSORT can be found in the CONSORT Database.
References
1. Moher D, Jones A, Lepage L. Use of the CONSORT statement and quality of reports of randomized trials: a comparative before-and-after
evaluation. JAMA. 2001;285:1992-5. [PMID: 11308436]
2. Plint AC, Moher D, Schulz K, Altman DG, Morrison A. Does the CONSORT checklist improve the quality of reports of randomized controlled trials? A systematic review. Firth International Congress of Peer Review and Biomedical Publication, September 16-18 2005. [PMID: 16948622]
Page last edited: 02 April 2008
