Reporting quality of trend analyses published in leading medicine and oncology journals during 2008-2018

Abstract

Reporting quality of clinical research is critical for evidence-based medicine and reproducibility of clinical research. Most of the works focused on reporting quality of clinical trials and observational longitudinal studies. However, few focused on that of trend analyses. The reporting of recommended statistic metrics in trend analyses was also largely unclear. Therefore, we examined reporting quality of the trend analyses based on reporting of recommended statistic metrics. We systemically searched the PubMed for the trend-analysis articles published in 10 leading medicine and oncology journals during the 11 years from 2008 to 2018. The studies published after 2019 were not included due to the sudden, significant increase of publication number during and immediately after the COVID-19 pandemic. Only original articles, research letters and meta-analyses/systematic reviews were included. We scored the reporting quality of these articles based on whether they reported p-values/effect-sizes, and beta/co-efficient/slope/annual-percentage-change (APC). There were 297 qualified articles, among which 193 (66.0%) and 216 (72.7%) articles reported P-value and effect-size, respectively. Only 13 (5.8%) analyses reported neither p-value/effect size nor beta/coefficient/slope/APC. In multivariable regression models, author affiliation of epidemiology department was associated with less reporting effect-size, but that of statistics department with more reporting. Interestingly, U.S. senior-authors (versus non-U.S.) more likely reported p-values. No factors were independently linked to reporting APC. The reporting quality of trend analyses in leading medicine and oncology journals appear moderate and should be further improved. We thus call for more research and awareness of reporting-quality in trend analyses in oncology research and beyond.