Reporting
Learning Objectives
This chapter will help you:
- use PRISMA checklists to report your review.
“…reports of systematic reviews should be transparent and complete. Furthermore, such reporting should allow others to replicate or update reviews.” (Page, Moher, et al., 2021, para. 1).
Reporting guidelines
PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) helps authors report reviews in a transparent, complete, and accurate way. It was designed to address poor reporting leading to reviews not being replicable or reliable (Page, McKenzie, et al., 2021). It is important to remember that PRISMA is not intended to guide the conduct of a review (Page, McKenzie, et al., 2021). However, it is helpful to ensure all recommended information is documented and recorded during the review process. This means you have all the information at hand when reporting.
Linda is reporting that she laid an egg. Video by E. Roga
There are several parts to PRISMA:
- PRISMA 2020 Statement: an overview of what PRISMA is and the items.
- PRISMA 2020 Explanation and Elaboration: a detailed explanation of why each reporting item is included and what should be reported on.
- PRISMA 2020 checklist: a checklist of each item.
- PRISMA 2020 flow diagram: a template for creating a flow diagram to document the search and screening process.
- PRISMA extensions: extensions for reporting other review types, such as scoping reviews, and for specific sections of a review, such as the abstract.
Using reporting guidelines means your review will be valuable and useful to readers and enable evaluation of your methods to determine your review’s trustworthiness. Policymakers and stakeholders will be able to evaluate if your findings apply to their context. They also allow others to replicate or update your work (Page, McKenzie, et al., 2021).
It is a good idea to read the PRISMA Statement and the Explanation and Elaboration to ensure you understand each item of the checklist, especially if you are new to conducting reviews. Some items are ‘essential’, meaning they should be reported on in all reviews of that type. These items are considered important as they allow readers to evaluate the review’s trustworthiness and applicability or help replication. Some items are ‘additional’, providing extra information that could improve the completeness and usability of the review (Page, Moher, et al., 2021).
An example of reporting the search
While the PRISMA statement gives guidance on reporting the entire review, we will focus on reporting the search using the PRISMA-S extension. It aims to improve the reporting of search methods to ensure this stage of the review is reproducible and minimise bias (Rethlefsen et al., 2021).
This video by Carrie Price, a health librarian, demonstrates how to write the search methods in detail using PRISMA-S.
Price, C. (2023, October 9). Let’s write a search methods section together: SR education: Methods Monday [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/RyTkmJ_vst8
Activity 15
Further reading
Rethlefsen, M. L., Brigham, T. J., Price, C., Moher, D., Bouter, L. M., Kirkham, J. J., Schroter, S., & Zeegers, M. P. (2024). Systematic review search strategies are poorly reported and not reproducible: A cross-sectional metaresearch study. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 166, Article 111229. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclinepi.2023.111229
References
Page, M. J., McKenzie, J. E., Bossuyt, P. M., Boutron, I., Hoffmann, T. C., Mulrow, C. D., Shamseer, L., Tetzlaff, J. M., Akl, E. A., Brennan, S. E., Chou, R., Glanville, J., Grimshaw, J. M., Hróbjartsson, A., Lalu, M. M., Li, T., Loder, E. W., Mayo-Wilson, E., McDonald, S., . . . Moher, D. (2021). The PRISMA 2020 statement: An updated guideline for reporting systematic reviews. BMJ, 372, Article n71. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n71
Page, M. J., Moher, D., Bossuyt, P. M., Boutron, I., Hoffmann, T. C., Mulrow, C. D., Shamseer, L., Tetzlaff, J. M., Akl, E. A., Brennan, S. E., Chou, R., Glanville, J., Grimshaw, J. M., Hróbjartsson, A., Lalu, M. M., Li, T., Loder, E. W., Mayo-Wilson, E., McDonald, S., . . . McKenzie, J. E. (2021). PRISMA 2020 explanation and elaboration: Updated guidance and exemplars for reporting systematic reviews. BMJ, 372, Article n160. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n160
Rethlefsen, M. L., Kirtley, S., Waffenschmidt, S., Ayala, A. P., Moher, D., Page, M. J., Koffel, J. B., & Prisma- S. Group. (2021). PRISMA-S: An extension to the PRISMA Statement for Reporting Literature Searches in Systematic Reviews. Systematic Reviews, 10(1), Article 39. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13643-020-01542-z
