PLoS Medicine: Reporting Guidelines for Survey Research: An Analysis of Published Guidance and Reporting Practices

Reporting Guidelines for Survey Research: An Analysis of Published Guidance and Reporting Practices
Carol Bennett and colleagues review the evidence and find that there is limited guidance and no consensus on the optimal reporting of survey research.

Carol Bennett1*, Sara Khangura1, Jamie C. Brehaut1,2, Ian D. Graham3, David Moher1,2, Beth K. Potter2, Jeremy M. Grimshaw1,4

1 Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, Clinical Epidemiology Program, Ottawa, Canada, 2 Department of Epidemiology and Community Medicine, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada, 3 Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Ottawa, Canada, 4 Department of Medicine, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada

Abstract
Background
Research needs to be reported transparently so readers can critically assess the strengths and weaknesses of the design, conduct, and analysis of studies. Reporting guidelines have been developed to inform reporting for a variety of study designs. The objective of this study was to identify whether there is a need to develop a reporting guideline for survey research.

Methods and Findings
We conducted a three-part project: (1) a systematic review of the literature (including “Instructions to Authors” from the top five journals of 33 medical specialties and top 15 general and internal medicine journals) to identify guidance for reporting survey research; (2) a systematic review of evidence on the quality of reporting of surveys; and (3) a review of reporting of key quality criteria for survey research in 117 recently published reports of self-administered surveys. Fewer than 7% of medical journals (n = 165) provided guidance to authors on survey research despite a majority having published survey-based studies in recent years. We identified four published checklists for conducting or reporting survey research, none of which were validated. We identified eight previous reviews of survey reporting quality, which focused on issues of non-response and accessibility of questionnaires. Our own review of 117 published survey studies revealed that many items were poorly reported: few studies provided the survey or core questions (35%), reported the validity or reliability of the instrument (19%), defined the response rate (25%), discussed the representativeness of the sample (11%), or identified how missing data were handled (11%).

Conclusions
There is limited guidance and no consensus regarding the optimal reporting of survey research. The majority of key reporting criteria are poorly reported in peer-reviewed survey research articles. Our findings highlight the need for clear and consistent reporting guidelines specific to survey research.

Please see later in the article for the Editors' Summary

Citation: Bennett C, Khangura S, Brehaut JC, Graham ID, Moher D, et al. (2011) Reporting Guidelines for Survey Research: An Analysis of Published Guidance and Reporting Practices. PLoS Med 8(8): e1001069. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001069

Academic Editor: Rachel Jewkes, Medical Research Council, South Africa


Received: December 23, 2010; Accepted: June 17, 2011; Published: August 2, 2011

Copyright: © 2011 Bennett et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Funding: Funding, in the form of salary support, was provided by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research [MGC – 42668]. The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

* E-mail: cbennett@ohri.ca

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PLoS Medicine: Reporting Guidelines for Survey Research: An Analysis of Published Guidance and Reporting Practices