流行病学和临床研究论文通常在第一张表中描述研究样本。如果执行得当,此“表1”可以说明对内部和外部有效性的潜在威胁。然而,关于设计表1的最佳实践,特别是对于复杂的研究设计和分析,几乎没有指导。我们旨在总结和扩展与报告描述性统计相关的文献。
与现有指南协商后,我们综合并制定了由研究设计驱动的报告建议,并侧重于与内部和外部有效性的潜在威胁相关的透明度。
我们描述了表1的基本结构,并讨论了列的简单修改,行,和细胞,以增强读者判断内部和外部有效性的能力。我们进一步强调了流行病学研究中常见的几种分析复杂性(缺失数据,样本重量,集群数据,和相互作用),并描述表1的可能变化,以根据这些问题保持和增加研究有效性的清晰度。我们在表1中讨论了与广度和全面性相对应的考虑因素和权衡简约和读者友好。
我们预计我们的工作将指导作者考虑表1的布局,并注意读者的观点。
Epidemiologic and clinical research papers often describe the study sample in the first table. If well-executed, this \"Table 1\" can illuminate potential threats to internal and external validity. However, little guidance exists on best practices for designing a Table 1, especially for complex study designs and analyses. We aimed to summarize and extend the literature related to reporting descriptive statistics.
In consultation with existing
guidelines, we synthesized and developed reporting recommendations driven by study design and focused on transparency related to potential threats to internal and external validity.
We describe a basic structure for Table 1 and discuss simple modifications in terms of columns, rows, and cells to enhance a reader\'s ability to judge both internal and external validity. We further highlight several analytic complexities common in epidemiologic research (missing data, sample weights, clustered data, and interaction) and describe possible variations to Table 1 to maintain and add clarity about study validity in light of these issues. We discuss considerations and tradeoffs in Table 1 related to breadth and comprehensiveness vs. parsimony and reader-friendliness.
We anticipate that our work will guide authors considering layouts for Table 1, with attention to the reader\'s perspective.