David Moher and colleagues introduce PRISMA, an update of the QUOROM guidelines for reporting systematic reviews and meta-analyses

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Preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses: the PRISMA statement

Systematic reviews and meta-analyses have become increasingly important in health care. Clinicians read them to keep up to date with their field,1,2 and they are often used as a starting point for developing clinical practice guidelines. Granting agencies may require a systematic review to ensure there is justification for further research,3 and some health care journals are moving in this direction.4 As with all research, the value of a systematic review depends on what was done, what was found, and the clarity of reporting. As with other publications, the reporting quality of systematic reviews varies, limiting readers' ability to assess the strengths and weaknesses of those reviews.

Several early studies evaluated the quality of review reports. In 1987, Mulrow examined 50 review articles published in 4 leading medical journals in 1985 and 1986 and found that none met all 8 explicit scientific criteria, such as a quality assessment of included studies.5 In 1987, Sacks and colleagues6 evaluated the adequacy of reporting of 83 meta-analyses on 23 characteristics in 6 domains. Reporting was generally poor; between 1 and 14 characteristics were adequately reported (mean = 7.7; standard deviation = 2.7). A 1996 update of this study found little improvement.7

In 1996, to address the suboptimal reporting of meta-analyses, an international group developed a guidance called the QUOROM Statement (QUality Of Reporting Of Meta-analyses), which focused on the reporting of meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials.8 In this article, we summarize a revision of these guidelines, renamed PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses), which have been updated to address several conceptual and practical advances in the science of systematic reviews (Box 1).



Box 1

Conceptual issues in the evolution from QUOROM to PRISMA

Preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses: the PRISMA Statement.

Preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses: The PRISMA statement

Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses: The PRISMA Statement [in Spanish]

Moher and colleagues introduce PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses), an update of the QUOROM guidelines for reporting systematic reviews and meta-analyses. Us...

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Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses: The PRISMA Statement

This paper examines how written research accounts based on ethnography appeal to readers to find them convincing. In particular, it highlights the role of rhetoric in the readers' interaction with and interpretation of the accounts. Extending relevant work in the literatures of organization studies, anthropology and literary criticism, the paper develops three dimensions-authenticity, plausibility and criticality-central to the process of convincing. Further, through the analysis of a sample of ethnographic articles, it discloses the particular writing practices and more general strategies that make claims on readers to engage the texts and to accept that these three dimensions have been achieved. Through authenticity, ethnographic texts appeal to readers to accept that the researcher was indeed present in the field and grasped how the members understood their world. Strategies to achieve authenticity include: particularizing everyday life, delineating the relationship between the researcher and organization members, depicting the disciplined pursuit and analysis of data, and qualifying personal biases. Through plausibility, ethnographic texts make claims on readers to accept that the findings make a distinctive contribution to issues of common concern. Plausibility is accomplished by strategies that normalize unorthodox methodologies, recruit the reader, legitimate atypical situations, smooth contestable assertions, build dramatic anticipation, and differentiate the findings. Finally, through criticality, ethnographic texts endeavor to probe readers to re-examine the taken-for-granted assumptions that underly their work. Strategies to achieve criticality include: carving out room to reflect, provoking the recognition and examination of differences, and enabling readers to imagine new possibilities. The empirical analyses, which highlight both the rhetorical and substantive aspects of convincing, suggest that at a minimum ethnographic texts must achieve both authenticity and plausibility-that is, they must convey the vitality and uniqueness of the field situation and also build their case for the particular contribution of the findings to a disciplinary area of common interest. These analyses also suggest that the most provocative task and promising potential of ethnography is the use of richly-grounded data to not only reflect on the members' world, but more importantly to provoke an examination of the readers' prevailing assumptions and beliefs.

Appealing Work: An Investigation of How Ethnographic Texts Convince

Objectives: To identify ways to improve the usefulness of systematic reviews for health care managers and policy-makers that could then be evaluated prospectively. Methods: We systematically reviewed studies of decision-making by health care managers and policy-makers, conducted interviews with a purposive sample of them in Canada and the United Kingdom (n ¼ 29), and reviewed the websites of research funders, producers/purveyors of research, and journals that include them among their target audiences (n ¼ 45). Results: Our systematic review identi¢ed that factors such as interactions between researchers and health care policy-makers and timing/timeliness appear to increase the prospects for research use among policymakers. Our interviews with health care managers and policy-makers suggest that they would bene¢t from having information that is relevant for decisions highlighted for them (e.g. contextual factors that aiect a review’s local applicability and information about the bene¢ts, harms/risks and costs of interventions) and having reviews presented in a way that allows for rapid scanning for relevance and then graded entry (such as one page of take-home messages, a three-page executive summary and a 25-page report). Managers and policy-makers have mixed views about the helpfulness of recommendations. Our analysis of websites found that contextual factors were rarely highlighted, recommendations were often provided and graded entry formats were rarely used. Conclusions: Researchers could help to ensure that the future £ow of systematic reviews will better inform health care management and policy-making by involving health care managers and policy-makers in their production and better highlighting information that is relevant for decisions. Research funders could help to ensure that the global stock of systematic reviews will better inform health care management and policymaking by supporting and evaluating local adaptation processes such as developing and making available online more user-friendly ‘front ends’ for potentially relevant systematic reviews.

Towards systematic reviews that inform health care management and policy-making.

Introduction Writing about Writing Writing our Fieldwork Focus on "Story" Organization of Chapters The Style and Practice of Our Academic Writing The Predominant Style of Academic Writing: Unadorned and Disembodied Experiencing the Practice of Academic Writing The Style and Practice of Academic Writing: Interested and Persuasive Discourse Our Writing Task Crafting a Theorized Storyline Establishing Theorized Storylines Developing the Theorized Storyline Compelling Beginnings Novel Use of Methodology Data-Theory Coupling Storylines with Field and Theory Complications Characterizing the Storyteller Storyteller in the Guise of Institutional and Human Scientist Institutional and Human Storyteller in Relationship to the Studied Institutional and Human Portrayals as Technically Competent Storyteller Institutional and Human Scientist as Field Knowledgeable Storyteller Re-Writing the Story Re-writing the Manuscript Prior to Journal Review Re-writing the Manuscript During the Journal Review Process Re-writing the Articulated Theorized Storylines Reflections on the Re-Written Manuscripts Conclusion Concluding Comments Appendix: Articles Used as Illustrations References Index About the Authors

Composing qualitative research

Examining a sample of journal articles, we develop a grounded theory of contribution that shows how organization studies theorists textually construct opportunities for making contributions to the ...

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Constructing Opportunities for Contribution: Structuring Intertextual Coherence and “Problematizing” in Organizational Studies

In recent years, agency theory has substantially influenced research on corporate governance. Organizational sociologists have critiqued the agency theory model of boards as limited and have studied how the functioning of boards is shaped by structural, political, and cognitive contexts. Building on their work, this paper empirically studies the cultural embeddedness of boards in a nonprofit organization called Medlay. It shows how organizational identity---the members' shared beliefs about the central, enduring, and distinctive characteristics of the organization---influences the construction and enactment of the director's role and shapes interactions among board members and managers. The findings demonstrate that the role of the director is shaped by Medlay's Janus-faced identity, as both a volunteer-driven organization and a family of friends; directors see themselves as vigilant monitors and as friendly, supportive colleagues. The findings also portray how some board members' scrutiny of the budget, including “lavish” travel expenditures, surfaces the contradictions in Medlay's identity, and creates conflicts for directors. Should board members take manager to task and thereby exercise vigilance and uphold the ideal of volunteer control, or should they safeguard the principle of friendship and avoid all conflict? An influential subset of directors and top managers resolved the budget issue and preserved Medlay's identity by using different “face-saving” strategies to make directors feel that they had been vigilant, and to affirm sentiments of cooperation. More generally, this study extends the literature on corporate governance by showing how organizational identity influences the construction and enactment of the director's role. It introduces the idea of “conflicts of commitment,” a form of intra-role conflict that arises when directors are besieged by conflicting aspects of the organization's identity. When actions occur that breach the expected role performance of board members, latent contradictions in the organizational identity emerge, and directors are faced with the conflict of upholding one dimension of identity while undermining the other. The study also contributes to research on organizational identity by proposing a model of how organizational and individual identities shape the board role through the processes of identification and action, and how a hybrid identity generates the potential for intra-role conflict.

Karen Golden-Biddle

Papers

Appealing Work: An Investigation of How Ethnographic Texts Convince

Towards systematic reviews that inform health care management and policy-making.

Composing qualitative research

Constructing Opportunities for Contribution: Structuring Intertextual Coherence and “Problematizing” in Organizational Studies

Breaches in the Boardroom: Organizational Identity and Conflicts of Commitment in a Nonprofit Organization