Epidemiology, quality, and reporting characteristics of systematic reviews and meta-analyses of nursing interventions published in Chinese journals

Ref ID 114
First Author J. Zhang
Journal NURSING OUTLOOK
Year Of Publishing 2015
URL https://www.nursingoutlook.org/article/S0029-6554(14)00278-4/fulltext
Keywords • Low reporting quality
• Heterogeneity
• Publication bias
• Statistical
• Risk of bias
• Searching
• Nursing
• Single reviewer
• Transparency
• Disclosure
Problem(s) • Inadequate analysis of heterogeneity
• Reasons for excluding potentially eligible studies not provided
• Single reviewer / lack of double checking
• Poor consideration of publication bias
• Lack of statistical expertise in handling of quantitative data
• No quality assessment undertaken or reported
• Low methodological (AMSTAR) quality
• Funding or sponsor of systematic review not reported
• Conflict of interest statement or disclosures for review authors missing
• Insufficient literature searches
• No registered or published protocol
Number of systematic reviews included 144
Summary of Findings Compliance with the AMSTAR checklist ranged from 0% to 84.7%. There was no evidence of any prospective registration of the protocol in any of the 144 included systematic reviews in nursing. Most (95%) reviews failed to provide full details of at least one electronic search. Single authors conducted 7.2% of the included systematic reviews. Only one review provided a list of the studies reviewed. Less than half of the reviews (22.9%) reported that a comprehensive literature search was performed (but 32.4% of them searched Chinese databases, and 4.4% searched only one database); 13.2% reviews reported the status of publication used as an inclusion criterion (but did not list the search detail). None of the Chinese nursing reviews reported conflicts of interest that might have biased results. Only 25% of systematic reviews were assessed for publication bias. 76.4% of the reviews appropriately conducted the quality assessment of the primary studies, and 70.8% of reviews linked quality to the interpretation of results. Statistical procedure errors appeared in more than half (65.3%) of the reviews. For example, in most reviews, the author(s) did not explore reasons for statistical heterogeneity but simply applied a random-effects model to combine results.
Did the article find that the problem(s) led to qualitative changes in interpretation of the results? N/A
Are the methods of the article described in enough detail to replicate the study? No