Critical appraisal of a published article can have a better insight of the quality of research delivered by the article.
Dear Dr. Kok,
The STROBE statement (which stands for STrengthening the Reporting of OBservational studies in Epidemiology) is the evidece based appraisal tool for observational studies.
You may find it here:
http://www.strobe-statement.org/
It consists of a checklist you may download directly from the website here:
http://www.strobe-statement.org/index.php?id=available-checklists
As you can see, there are checklists for cohort, case-control and cross-sectional studies.
I hope you find this helpful
Best wishes
Miguel
Dear Martín,
Thanks for your insight. You are right that reporting is not the same as appraisal. However, if you report properly all the relevant data in a study, this will mean some degree of confidence that the study has been conducted in a proper way, and thus less risk of bias.
In the same way, a tool like STROBE (or CONSORT, or PRISMA) would be useful as a way to check if the trial contains all the items it must have in order to be methodologically sound.
I do not totally agree with the article you propose. In it, they say (quote):
"The use of STROBE in observational studies and systematic reviews (including meta-analyses) was classified as appropriate or inappropriate. The use of STROBE to guide the reporting of observational studies was considered appropriate. Inappropriate uses included the use of STROBE as a tool to assess the methodological quality of studies or as a guideline on how to design and conduct studies."
In my opinion, this is an example of circular reasoning, because they classify inapropriate the use of STROBE for assessment purposes because they state it that way in the objectives. Da Costa et al. explain that reporting quality it is not strictly the same as internal validity. However, could not STROBE be a useful surrogate tool to measure the quality of a study? What do you think?
Best
Miguel
sometimes, you can not find a tool completely fit your needs. then you need to develop appraisal tool, or at least several questions based on study design, clinical and methodological requirements.
CASP checklists can be downloaded here http://www.casp-uk.net/#!casp-tools-checklists/c18f8. There is one for cohort studies.
I agree that reporting checklists and critical appraisal checklists look at different domains. A study can be very well reported - which allows you to discover it is methodologically weak and therefore not of much use in decision making when you critically appraise it! Also, critical appraisal is not just about the internal validity of a study but also its relevance to the context for which you are seeking information.
Mr. Kok,
From experience, I suggest one specific (and interesting) tool for observational studies assessment: Newcastle-Ottawa Scale.
On the other hand, to increase the quality of your review, I suggest that it is also interesting to evaluate the reports quality by STROBE.
Best regards,
Paulo
http://www.ohri.ca/programs/clinical_epidemiology/oxford.asp
Though adapted for cross-sectional studies, Newcastle-Ottawa scale is not suitable for descriptive cross-sectional (prevalence) studies. I recommend JBI critical appraisal tool for cross-sectional, case-control and cohort studies
Newcastle-Ottawa scale for cohort studies and
JADDA scale for RCTs
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