Table 2.
Quality Assessments of Studies Included in the Systematic Review (pre-post studies).
| Huang et al., 2016 [31] | Liu et al., 2007 [26] | Meng et al., 2004 [23] | Huang, 2008 [27] | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Was the study question or objective clearly stated? | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 2. Were eligibility/selection criteria for the study population pre-specified and clearly described? | Yes | No | No | Yes |
| 3. Were the participants in the study representative of those who would be eligible for the test/service/intervention in the general or clinical population of interest? | Yes | CD | No | Yes |
| 4. Were all eligible participants the met the pre-specified entry criteria enrolled? | Yes | CD | CD | Yes |
| 5. Was the sample size sufficiently large to provide confidence in the findings? | NR | NR | NR | NR |
| 6. Was the test/service/intervention clearly described and delivered consistently across the study population? | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 7. Were the outcome measures pre-specified, clearly defined, valid, reliable, and assessed consistently across all study participants? | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
| 8. Were the people assessing the outcomes blinded to the participants’ exposure/ interventions? | Yes | NR | NR | NR |
| 9. Was the loss to follow-up after baseline 20% or less? Were those lost to follow-up accounted for in the analysis? | No | No | No | Yes |
| 10. Did the statistical methods examine changes in outcome measures from before to after the intervention? Were statistical tests done that provided p values for the pre-to-post changes? | Yes | No | No | Yes |
| 11. Were outcome measures of interest taken multiple times before the intervention and multiple times after the intervention? (i.e., did they use an interrupted time-series design) | No | No | No | No |
| 12. If the intervention was conducted at a group level (e.g., a whole hospital, a community, etc.) did the statistical analysis take into account the use of individual-level data to determine effects at the group levels? | NA | NA | NA | NA |
| Quality rating (good, fair, or poor) | Fair | Poor | Poor | Fair |
| Additional Comments (If POOR, please state why): | some important details about methodology were not reported in this study, which makes the results unreliable | some important details about methodology were not reported in this study, which makes the results unreliable |
CD = cannot determine; NA = not applicable; NR = not reported.