The theoretical report in systematic reviews: an important gapBackground: flaws in theoretical reporting can reduce the validity of findings and negatively impact the reproducibility of studies.
Objective: This study aimed to analyze the transparent and in-depth theoretical report of systematic reviews with or without meta-analyses in national journals.
Method: This was a cross-sectional study, consisting of systematic reviews in two journals, Revista de Saúde Pública (RSP) and Cadernos de Saúde Pública (CSP). Reviews published from 2014 to 2018 were included. There were no language restrictions. The selection of articles and data extraction was carried out in duplicate, independently. To evaluate the theoretical report, the Checklist for Theoretical Report in Epidemiological Studies (CRT-EE) was used. Statistical tests were performed using the IBM Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) 21 software, to assess the degree of agreement with the difference in means, at the significance level of p<0.05.
Results: Forty-five systematic reviews were included, of which only 28.9% adequately addressed at least one CRT-EE item. From the 15 items, the frequency of requirements met by systematic reviews, among journals, ranged from zero to five for RSP and zero to six for CSP. No significant mean differences (p>0.731) were observed between journals in relation to the scores obtained.
Conclusion: Our study shows a great weakness in the theoretical report of systematic reviews with or without meta-analyses, which can influence their quality and reproducibility.
Keywords:
models, theoretical; measures, methods and theories; research report; systematic reviews as topic; meta-analysis as topic
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