- Title
- A Systematic Review of the Reporting Quality of Observational Studies That Use Mediation Analyses
- Creator
- Rizzo, Rodrigo R. N.; Cashin, Aidan G.; Bagg, Matthew K.; Gustin, Syliva M.; Lee, Hopin; McAuley, James H.
- Relation
- NHMRC.APP1126767 http://purl.org/au-research/grants/nhmrc/1126767
- Relation
- Prevention Science Vol. 23, Issue 6, p. 1041-1052
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11121-022-01349-5
- Publisher
- Springer
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2022
- Description
- Mediation analysis is a common statistical method used to investigate mechanisms of health exposure and interventions. The reporting quality of mediation studies used in randomised controlled trials has been considered heterogeneous and incomplete. The reporting quality of mediation analysis in observational studies is unknown. We conducted a systematic review to describe the reporting standards of recently published observational studies that used mediation analysis to understand the mechanism of health exposures. We searched for studies published between June 2017 and June 2019 indexed in EMBASE, MEDLINE and PsycINFO. Two reviewers screened articles and selected a random sample of 50 eligible studies for inclusion. We included studies across 13 healthcare fields and ten different health conditions. Most studies (74%) collected data on healthy individuals to assess their risk of developing a health disorder. Psychosocial and behavioural factors (self-control, self-esteem, alcohol consumption, pain) were the most prevalent exposures (n = 30, 60%), outcomes (n = 23, 46%) and mediators (n = 29, 58%). Most studies used a cross-sectional design (64%, n = 32), and a few studies reported sample size calculations (4%, n = 8). In 20% (n = 10) of the studies, adjustment for confounders was reported. Only 10% (n = 5) of studies reported the assumptions underlying the mediation analysis, and 14% (n = 7) of studies conducted some sensitivity analysis to assess the degree which unmeasured confounders would affect the estimate of the mediation effect. Mediation analysis is a common method used to investigate mechanisms in prevention research. The reporting of mediation analysis in observational studies is incomplete and may impact reproducibility, evidence synthesis and implementation.
- Subject
- mechanism; mediation analysis; systematic review; observational studies; reporting; publication
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1475674
- Identifier
- uon:49622
- Identifier
- ISSN:1389-4986
- Rights
- © 2022 The Author(s). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made availablein this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
- Reviewed
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