Journal of clinical epidemiology
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Any attempt to generalize the performance of a subjective diagnostic method should take into account the sample variation in both cases and readers. Most current measures of the performance of a test, especially the indices of reliability, only tackle the variation of cases, and hence are not suitable for generalizing results across the population of readers. We attempted to study the effect of readers' variation on two measures of multireader reliability: pair-wise agreement and Fleiss' kappa. ⋯ The majority of the current agreement studies is likely limited by the number of readers and is unlikely to produce a reliable estimate of reader agreement.
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As part of a larger project on updating systematic reviews, we studied the currency of reviews at the time of publication to determine typical and achievable times to publication for systematic reviews published in journals, Health Technology Assessment technical reports or Cochrane Collaboration reviews, and examined differences in publication speed between these document types. ⋯ Efforts to reduce the time spent in production of systematic reviews can improve currency. Both authors and publishers can contribute to more rapid production of health care evidence syntheses.
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To assess how information about adverse events is included in systematic reviews. ⋯ Most Cochrane reviews of drug interventions considered adverse events. This was not the case for DARE reviews and for Cochrane reviews of nondrug interventions. This could be improved.
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To examine trends in and determinants of the number of authors in clinical studies. ⋯ The number of authors in articles of randomized and nonrandomized studies has increased over time, even after adjusting for the topic, size, and visibility of a study. The academic coinage of authorship may be suffering from inflation.
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To present an explanatory framework for understanding prognosis and illustrate it using data from a systematic review. ⋯ When conducting and reporting prognosis studies, researchers should consider the approach to prognosis (explanatory or outcome prediction) and phase of investigation, use best methods to limit biases, report completely, and cautiously interpret results. Readers of health care research will then be better able to evaluate the goals and interpret and appropriately use the results of prognosis studies.