Matvienko-Sikar, K., O'Shea, J., Kennedy, S. et al. (10 more authors) (2024) Selective outcome reporting in trials of behavioural health interventions in health psychology and behavioural medicine journals: a review. Health Psychology Review. ISSN 1743-7199
Abstract
Selective outcome reporting can result in overestimation of treatment effects, research waste, and reduced openness and transparency. This review aimed to examine selective outcome reporting in trials of behavioural health interventions and determine potential outcome reporting bias. A review of nine health psychology and behavioural medicine journals was conducted to identify randomised controlled trials of behavioural health interventions published since 2019. Discrepancies in outcome reporting were observed in 90% of the 29 trials with corresponding registrations/protocols. Discrepancies included 72% of trials omitting prespecified outcomes; 55% of trials introduced new outcomes. Thirty-eight percent of trials omitted prespecified and introduced new outcomes. Three trials (10%) downgraded primary outcomes in registrations/protocols to secondary outcomes in final reports; downgraded outcomes were not statistically significant in two trials. Five trials (17%) upgraded secondary outcomes to primary outcomes; upgraded outcomes were statistically significant in all trials. In final reports, three trials (7%) omitted outcomes from the methods section; three trials (7%) introduced new outcomes in results that were not in the methods. These findings indicate that selective outcome reporting is a problem in behavioural health intervention trials. Journal- and trialist-level approaches are needed to minimise selective outcome reporting in health psychology and behavioural medicine.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. |
Keywords: | Selective outcome reporting;outcome reporting bias; behavioural health interventions; health psychology; behavioural medicine; open research |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Medicine and Health (Leeds) > School of Psychology (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 09 Jul 2024 08:21 |
Last Modified: | 09 Jul 2024 08:22 |
Published Version: | https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17437... |
Status: | Published online |
Publisher: | Taylor & Francis |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/17437199.2024.2367613 |
Related URLs: | |
Sustainable Development Goals: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:214582 |