| Methods |
Evaluates the quality of reporting of RCTs in TCM journals published in 1999 and 2004 |
| Data |
Reported by years 1999 to 2004 and CONSORT item in the paper
This has been sorted into pre‐CONSORT (1999‐2001) and post CONSORT (2002‐2004), with 2930 and 4492 RCTs respectively |
| Comparisons |
Cross‐sectional sample of RCTs before and after CONSORT publication |
| Outcomes |
Title and abstract, background, participants, interventions, objectives, outcomes, sample size, sequence generation, allocation concealment, blinding of participants, statistical methods, participant flow, recruitment, baseline data, outcomes and estimation, ancillary analyses, adverse events, interpretation, generalisability, overall evidence |
| Included number of RCTs, Journals |
7422, 13 |
| Checklist version used |
Modification of the 2001 checklist |
| Field of Study |
Traditional Chinese Medicine |
| Notes |
This study also assesses quality based on the Jadad score
This study was found externally to the search
Score out of 30 items
It should be noted that this study was conducted on behalf of the CONSORT group for TCM |
| Risk of bias |
| Item |
Authors' judgement |
Description |
| Large Cohort ? |
Yes |
RCTs published in 13 journals over 5 years (1999‐2004) |
| Blinding? |
Unclear |
Not reported |
| Confounding by journal quality? |
Unclear |
Not explicitly discussed |
| Outcome Reporting? |
Yes |
No differences between planned and reported outcomes and analyses |
| Multiple raters? |
Yes |
Quote: "Data extraction and the evaluation of methodologic quality were performed independently by 2 reviewers" |
| Rater agreement? |
No |
Agreement was high (> 0.70), indicating low interobserver and intraobserver variability |
| Blinding, quality assessment? |
Unclear |
Not reported |
