Quality Assessment For The Published Meta-analysis Articles In Chinese Medical Journals

Objective:To evaluate quality of statistical methods and methodological quality of Meta-analysisliteratures published in domestic medical journals.Methods:Domestic Meta-analysis literatures on drug treatment of year2011are selected in thisstudy. Self-designed evaluation scale of methodological quality of meta-analysis andOQAQ scale are used to evaluate the quality of methodology and statistical analysis.Statistical methods mainly involve four aspects: test of heterogeneity, data combining,publication bias analysis, sensitivity analysis. The frequency and constituent ratio are usedto describe general situation of literatures (type of study, author affiliation, type ofsponsored scholarship and number of selected articles) and quality of methodology.Describe the quality of four aspects involved in statistical analysis according to differentgeneral characteristics of literatures. Multiple correspondence analysis is used to revel thecorrespondence relationship between the general characteristics and the quality of statisticalanalysis.Result： 214literatures are included in this study, mean score of OQAQ scale of which is5.67±1.18. Three major problems exist in these literatures:38.97%of literatures’ areunqualified in search strategy,37.38%are unqualified in dealing with selection bias and35.05%are unqualified in data combining. There are only21literatures that all meet thefirst9standards of OQAQ scale. Result of evaluation scale o f statistical analysis ofmeta-analysis shows that only9literatures are totally qualified, and the main problemsexist in sensitivity analysis, publication bias analysis and data combining. Sensitivityanalysis isn’t conducted in166(77.57%) literatures. publication bias isn’t explored in140literatures65.36%).data combining method is unreasonable in75(35.05%) literatures.Result of multiple correspondence analysis indicates that methodological quality aresignificantly associated with scholarship of funds, number of selected articles and type ofauthor.Conclusion:This study indicates that published meta-analysis articles in domestic medical journalshave defects in methodology, especially in statistical methods. Of all the defects, thefollowing ones are more prominent: common existence of sampling bias and selection bias,unreasonable consolidation, ignorance of test of publication bias and sensitivity analysis.Innovation:This study assessed the quality of the meta-analysis articles in Chinese medicaljournals firstly by the combination of the OQAQ scale and the quality evaluation scale formeta-analysis.