1. Assessment of compliance.

Study	Intervention group	Design	Method of assessing compliance	Unit	Follow‐up time	Compliance level1
						Intervention arm	Placebo arm
Chen‐Hussey 2013	Topical repellent	cRCT	Self‐reported compliance. Self‐reported combined with an estimation of the proportion of lotion used by the participant by weighing the returned bottles.	Percentage of self‐reported participants/night that adhered to the assigned treatment in a given month. Participants who reported to have used the repellent and confirmed by the weight of returned bottles.	Monthly surveys	Moderate: 61.3%	Moderate: 62.2%
Hill 2007	Topical repellent	cRCT	Self‐reported compliance through questionnaires combined with an estimation of the amount used by weighing the returned bottles, and verified by unannounced “sniff checks”.	Cumulative percentage of compliant households per month. A household was considered non‐compliant if they had reported to have not used the repellent 3 or more nights in a month or had more than 30 ml left in the bottle.	Monthly surveys	High: 98.5% (119/8164)	High: 98.5% (110/7876)
Hill 2014	Spatial repellent	cRCT	Daily recordings of compliance per household were reported by village leaders. Compliance was further confirmed by counting the number of empty mosquito coil boxes in each house.	Cumulative percentage of compliant households per month. A household was considered non‐compliant if it did not use the coils for 3 days or longer in one month.	Monthly surveys	High No treatment arm: 89.3% LLIN arm: 97.8%	High Repellent coils arm: 98.6% Repellent coils + LLINs: 98.5%
McGready 2001	Topical repellent	RCT	Weekly self‐reporting and random spot checks.	Cumulative percentage of compliant participants per week.	Weekly surveys	Unclear Compliance was reported to be similar across treatment arms (P = 0.24) but was not reported for each arm. Self‐reported compliance: 90.5% (87,715/96,955) Compliance measured by spot checks: 84.6% (1918/2267)
Sangoro 2014a	Topical repellent	cRCT	Self‐reported compliance through questionnaires combined with an estimation of the amount used by counting the empty returned bottles.	Mean number of bottles of repellent issued to each household per month.	Monthly surveys	Unclear Authors stated that self‐reported data was unreliable so they used the data from the empty bottles to estimate compliance. Compliance was poorly reported. The authors reported mean number of bottles issued per household per month rather than estimating the compliance level for each treatment arm: Repellent arm: 6.73 bottles (95% CI 6.51 to 6.95) Placebo arm: 6.92 bottles (95% CI 6.68 to 7.16)
Sluydts 2016	Topical repellent	cRCT	Self‐reported compliance was assessed using questionnaires during 3 surveys in October 2012, March 2013 and October 2013. The repellent consumption rate was measured per family every 2 weeks during the repellent distribution by visual inspection of the leftover repellent divided into categories (for example, empty, half full, full). A social science study was done to assess the acceptability and use of repellents in 10 selected clusters.	Unit of measurement was not clearly defined. Self‐reported compliance is likely the percentage of compliant households during the survey period but was not defined in the article. The repellent consumption rate was not reported. Social study reported percentage of participants observed to comply with the application of the repellent from a small selection of 10 clusters in the intervention group.	Non‐periodic surveys (in October 2012, March 2013 and October 2013) along the duration of the trial.	Self‐reported compliance was reported around 70%. However, observational studies reported compliance between 6% and 15% .	No placebo

¹Levels of compliance: high: > 80%; moderate: 50% to 79%; low: < 50%.