STROBE was developed to be used as more of a check-list than a score, just to have a standard way of reporting those 3 types of research i.e. cohort, case control, and cross-sectional. It would be inappropriate to use STROBE as a scoring tool to validate or assess methodological quality of studies. The aim of STROBE is to provide guidance to authors on how to improve the reporting of observational studies to facilitate critical appraisal and interpretation of results. It is a misuse to apply STROBE to explain how a research should be done or on how it should be designed. 

By the way, STROBE is becoming increasingly applied by researchers and journal editors worldwide. 

Further clarification on the paper attached. Hope this helps.  

Article Uses and misuses of the STROBE statement: Bibliographic study

STROBE was developed to be used as more of a check-list than a score, just to have a standard way of reporting those 3 types of research i.e. cohort, case control, and cross-sectional. It would be inappropriate to use STROBE as a scoring tool to validate or assess methodological quality of studies. The aim of STROBE is to provide guidance to authors on how to improve the reporting of observational studies to facilitate critical appraisal and interpretation of results. It is a misuse to apply STROBE to explain how a research should be done or on how it should be designed. 

By the way, STROBE is becoming increasingly applied by researchers and journal editors worldwide. 

Further clarification on the paper attached. Hope this helps.  

Article Uses and misuses of the STROBE statement: Bibliographic study

Dear Yohannes, I read the above attached article with great interest and many thanks for your opinion. Inside the Highlights in the front page of this article, it says: "We examined the reasons for citing STROBE and found that most observational studies used STROBE as a reporting guideline, while about half of systematic reviews used STROBE as a tool to assess the methodological quality of the studies."

This is the issue I wish to highlight and want more information. About half of S.Rs did use STROBE as a tool to assess the methodological quality of the studies. So it sounds like, gradually, people double use it as one of the useful assessment tools for this type of research articles

Dear Victor,

I fully share your concerns. This needs to be properly addressed and such misuses have to be discontinued. I will do my best to raise this awareness whenever I come across such misuses. 

Indeed, you have raised an important question on the need to optimize current trends of applying STROBE. 

Agreed, this is indeed misuse of STROBE. It cannot be used to score the methodological quality of studies as it is simply a reporting check-list and if arbitrarily scored we end up with a quality of reporting score that can be completely different from a methodological quality score. The latter aims to identify the extent to which safe-guards against bias were implemented while STROBE aims to ensure that key aspects of the study are reported.

If STROBE is not to be used to assess the methodological quality of studies for a SR, which tool would you recommend?