Table 8.

Recommended reporting items and justification for studies of otitis media and associated hearing loss in LMIC or disadvantaged populations.

STROBE item	Recommendation	Justification
Setting	Specify: Urban vs. rural setting* Season Smoking rates* Breastfeeding rates*	Variation by urban Variation by season, incl. wet vs. dry Smoking risk association Breastfeeding protection association
Participants	Specify selection method Describe your assessment of generalisability	Population-based vs. healthcare attendance very different OM varies by multiple factors and readers not familiar with your setting will not know the prevalence of risk factors (e.g., breastfeeding, smoking)
Variables	Define each condition you are reporting	No consensus on definitions
Measurement	Specify diagnostic technique(s) used Specify cut-off Specify examiner (e.g., role and experience)	No consistency with techniques and sensitivity varies by technique No consistency with cut-off (e.g., Type B or Type B + C tympanograms) Examiners varied experience/expertise
Descriptive data	Specify age range, mean and SD of participants	OM prevalence significantly different by age categories
Outcome data for OM	Specify results for each diagnostic technique (e.g., frequency of each tympanogram type) Report prevalence by both child and ear separately Specify diagnostic hierarchy used. Suggested hierarchy: - Cholesteatoma - CSOM - AOM with perforation - TTO - Dry perforation - recurrent AOM - other AOM - chronic OME - other OME - Wax - Other - Normal	Reporting the frequency of each type of Tympanogram enables comparison with studies using different definitions No consensus on reporting and important to differentiate child level vs. ear level hearing impairment Most clinical decisions are determined at the child level not ear level When reporting by child, the reader needs to know how children with different conditions in each ear were categorised
Outcome data for hearing	Report prevalence by both child and ear separately Use WHO definitions Report loss by each frequency tested Report loss in some other way (e.g., 3FAHL) please also report as above	High variability in HL reporting makes it hard to compare samples
Generalisability	Specify age range, mean and SD of participants (and/or median age if not a normal distribution)	OM prevalence significantly different by age categories so a range alone is not sufficient to enable comparisons with other datasets

^*report best available local data if you do not know the precise rates for your specific sample