The PRISMA statement for reporting systematic reviews of China health policy

Article type
Authors
He S1, Zhao J2, Zhang F1, Tian JH3
1Evidence-Based Medicine Center, School of Basic Medical Sciences of Lanzhou University, China
2Evidence-Based Medicine Center, School of Basic Medical Sciences of Lanzhou University, China;
3School of Public Health of Lanzhou University, China
Abstract
Background: Publication bias in a systematic review (SR) occurs mostly during the selection process and a transparent selection process is necessary to avoid such bias. The Preferred Reporting Items of Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) Statement was published to help authors improve how they report SRs.

Objectives: To identify SRs of China health policy and evaluate their reporting quality by PRISMA.

Methods: An electronic literature search of all SRs of China healthy policy from inception to December 2012 was conducted using the following text and keywords in combination both MeSH terms and text words, the search strategy was (meta analysis OR meta analyses OR systematic review* OR overreview) AND (health or policy) in five Chinese databases. The reporting quality was assessed independently by two reviewers using the PRISMA.

Results: Fifty SRs were included finally. The result of PRISMA showed in Table 1. The CSCD or non-CSCD articles, the fund support, the published year and the number of the author seem to have little impact on the quality of the SRs. there were more items showing significant difference in the group of the number of the authors, which indicated that the author number may influence the reporting quality of SRs in China health policy.

Conclusions: The reporting quality of SRs of China health policy was poor. The PRISMA statement may give the authors a useful reference to improve the reporting quality of SRs in this field.