Table 3.
Potential reporting items in Delphi round 1 reporting respondent votes to include, require or recommend items
| Potential reporting items Ranked by % voting to include item then by % voting to require item |
Delphi round 1, N=98 | |||
| Include item | Among respondents Voting to include item* | |||
| Require item* | Recommend item* | |||
| 1 | Discuss implications of study findings for research, patient care, education and policy with specific focus on primary care. | 97% (88/91) | 72% (63/88) | 28% (25/88) |
| 2 | Include ‘primary care’ in the title, abstract and/or keywords or a discipline-specific term (eg, general practice, family medicine). | 97% (95/98) | 55% (52/95) | 45% (43/95) |
| 3 | Describe the patients and populations in sufficient detail to allow comparison to other PC patient populations, including multimorbidities, inequity, vulnerability. | 89% (84/94) | 53% (43/84) | 47% (38/84) |
| 4 | Describe clinical interventions in detail sufficient to allow readers to judge applicability to a variety of PC settings, including resources required, implementation, sustainability, challenges faced, solutions adopted. | 88% (80/91) | 55% (44/80) | 43% (34/80) |
| 5 | Describe study interventions in detail sufficient to allow reader to replicate the research. | 86% (78/91) | 71% (55/78) | 28% (22/78) |
| 6 | If a single disease is being studied, address the limitations and how multimorbidity might affect interpretation of study findings. | 85% (77/91) | 40% (31/77) | 60% (46/77) |
| 7 | Describe if and how measures have been validated in PC settings. | 85% (77/91) | 41% (31/77) | 59% (45/77) |
| 8 | Describe the research processes and how they might influence validity, transferability and scalability across PC settings (eg, recruitment, incentives, support for the intervention in a research setting). | 83% (78/94) | 65% (51/78) | 34% (27/78) |
| 9 | Describe the importance of the issue under study (eg, problem, disease, diagnosis or illness) within the PC setting. | 82% (79/96) | 57% (45/79) | 42% (33/79) |
| 10 | Use person-first language (eg, person with diabetes, not diabetic). | 82% (80/98) | 44% (35/80) | 55% (44/80) |
| 11 | Describe the national and local healthcare system to allow comparison to other systems, such as: access to care, organisation of primary care, payment system, universal care or coverage, self referral to consultants, drug coverage, any characteristics likely different from the setting for most readers. | 81% (74/91) | 47% (35/74) | 51% (38/74) |
| 12 | Describe how PC patients and/or community members were involved throughout the research process. | 78% (75/96) | 39% (29/74) | 58% (43/74) |
| 13 | Describe how measures are relevant to PC patients and PC patient care. | 73% (66/91) | 42% (28/66) | 58% (38/66) |
| 14 | Describe the clustering of patients, clinicians, teams and clinics and how it is addressed in the analysis. | 71% (67/94) | 55% (37/67) | 42% (28/67) |
| 15 | Describe the origin of the research question and how it relates to patient care and primary care practice. | 70% (69/98) | 48% (33/69) | 46% (32/69) |
| 16 | Describe implementation strategies used to encourage adoption of the intervention into routine PC clinical care. | 70% (64/91) | 30% (19/64) | 64% (41/64) |
| 17 | Specify if the focus is on single clinical encounters or on a longitudinal course of care for a clinical problem (eg, episode of illness, episode of care). | 66% (61/92) | 44% (27/61) | 54% (33/61) |
| 18 | If clinicians are an object of study, report separate groups separately or give rationale for aggregating different types of clinicians. | 64% (60/94) | 50% (30/60) | 47% (28/60) |
| 19 | Describe how PC practicing clinicians were involved throughout the research process. | 63% (60/96) | 28% (17/60) | 72% (43/60) |
| 20 | Discuss the impact of any recommendations on competing demands in PC practice. | 63% (57/90) | 23% (13/57) | 75% (43/57) |
| 21 | Practice team—describe the composition and organisation of teams delivering patient care. | 59% (55/94) | 42% (23/55) | 56% (31/55) |
| 22 | Describe the professional backgrounds of members of the research team and their experience in PC. | 56% (54/96) | 39% (21/54) | 56% (30/54) |
| 23 | Practice context—describe PC clinicians by profession, specialty, training and certification. | 57% (54/95) | 33% (18/54) | 65% (35/54) |
| 24 | Describe the relationships between study patients and clinicians/teams, including, the definition used and method for classifying patients.
|
57% (52/91) | 25% (13/52) | 69% (36/52) |
| 25 | Report strength of recommendations.† | 53% (48/91) | 40% (19/48) | 56% (27/48) |
| 26 | Describe the relationships between researchers and treating clinicians/team members and how relationships might influence the process and outcomes of the research. | 50% (48/96) | 40% (19/48) | 50% (24/48) |
| 27 | Report if the clinical problem studied is a new, continuing, recurrent or chronic/persistent problem. | 49% (46/94) | 46% (21/46) | 48% (22/46) |
| 28 | Specify the focus of study as: a problem (eg, headache) disease/diagnosis (eg, migraine) illness (eg, person living with migraines).† | 47% (43/92) | 33% (14/43) | 60% (25/43) |
| 29 | Report or translate measures into forms useful in PC patient care. | 26% (24/91) | 33% (8/24) | 67% (16/24) |
Please note that this is not the final Consensus Reporting Items for Studies in Primary Care guidance.
Table lists reporting items presented to Delphi participants, not final recommendations for research reporting.
*For each question, some respondents did not answer or selected ‘unsure’, so the total require and recommend does not equal the total include.
†DNP—did not proceed to round 2.
PC, primary care.