Table 5.

Reviewers’ attitudes to conflict of interest (COI)

Item	Mean (SD)
Usefulness of COI information
The conflict of interest information I received was sufficient to objectively evaluate the manuscript	4.01 (1.12)
After reading the conflict of interest information provided by the authors, I knew what, if any, impact it should have on my evaluation of this manuscript	3.93 (1.09)
The typical peer reviewer would know how to change their review and recommend changes in the manuscript (if needed) based on COI information disclosure	3.19 (0.95)
General attitudes toward COI
It is reasonable to require authors of medical papers to disclose conflicts of interest	4.78 (0.56)
Requiring authors to disclose conflicts of interest improves the quality of academic publications	4.34 (0.83)
Conflicts of interest are a serious problem in medical research	3.78 (0.97)
Industry collaboration with academics is, on balance, a good thing	3.49 (0.91)
Investigators receiving financial support from commercial interests have a hard time being objective in their research	3.38 (0.98)
The problem of conflicts of interest is exaggerated in the US media	2.54 (1.08)
Policies dealing with conflicts of interest have become a kind of witch-hunt in medicine	2.32 (1.08)

Response scale for all items: 1=strongly disagree to 5=strongly agree. Means collapse across treatment arm because items were assessed at end of follow-up survey, after all reviewers had received COI disclosure. For first two items in table, n=2444. For all other items, n=905 (as these items assessed reviewers’ general attitudes toward COI, they were administered only first time given reviewer took follow-up survey—that is, for first review that reviewer submitted during study period).