Reporting guidelines are recommendations to help write up research clearly.
Your research will be used by people from different disciplines and backgrounds for decades to come. Reporting guidelines are community-created recommendations for describing what you did and what you found so that everyone can understand, repeat, apply, and synthesise your work. Although they recommend information to include in your manuscript, they don’t dictate how to order that information.
Most reporting guidelines consist of the full guidance (sometimes called an Explanation and Elaboration document) and a checklist. The full guidance provides detailed explanations and examples for each item, and the checklist allows you to demonstrate adherence to editors.
You can use reporting guidelines throughout your research process. However you use reporting guidelines, please cite them.
Writing manuscripts
Write confidently using a reporting guideline to quickly turn a blank page into a thorough and impactful manuscript.
Checking
Use a reporting checklist to demonstrate to an editor or peer reviewer that you have included everything. Many journals require completed checklists at submission.
Writing applications
Reporting guidelines can help you write funding applications, ethics applications, and protocols, but they won’t make design decisions for you!
Reporting guidelines are neither design nor quality appraisal tools.
Although reporting guidelines recommend information to include when writing up research, they do not mandate how to design research. Similarly, when reviewing literature, although you can use reporting guidelines to assess whether a manuscript is well reported, you cannot use them to appraise whether that study is well designed.
Key information
Reporting guideline acronym
MORECare
Provided for
Research evaluating services and treatments in end of life care
Relevant URLs (full-text if available)
PubMed ID
Downloads
Bibliographic reference
Commonly used reporting guidelines
| STROBE | Observational Studies |
| PRISMA | Systematic reviews of trials |
| PRISMA-P | Systematic review protocols |
| CONSORT | Randomised trials |
| SPIRIT | Randomised trial protocols |
| SRQR | Qualitative Research |
| CARE | Case Reports |
| STARD | Diagnostic studies |
| TRIPOD+AI | Prediction Models |
| ARRIVE | Animal Research |
| SQUIRE | Quality Improvement |
| CHEERS | Economic Evaluations |
| Search all |
Higginson IJ, Evans CJ, Grande G, Preston N, Morgan M, McCrone P, Lewis P, Fayers P, Harding R, Hotopf M, Murray SA, Benalia H, Gysels M, Farquhar M, Todd C; MORECare. Evaluating complex interventions in end of life care: the MORECare statement on good practice generated by a synthesis of transparent expert consultations and systematic reviews. BMC Med. 2013;24;11:111.
Additional information
Language
English
Availability in additional languages
Study design
- Experimental studies
- Mixed methods studies
- Observational studies
Clinical area
- Palliative care
Applies to the whole report or to individual sections of the report?
- Ethical issues (consent etc.)
- Outcomes (variables)
- Procedure/Method
- Statistical methods and analyses
- Study characteristics (participants etc.)
Reporting guideline website URL
Previous versions of this guideline / Guideline history
Other
Further information is available from: MORECare Statement
Additional Information
The following papers have also been published by the MORECare researchers:
Preston NJ, Fayers P, Walters SJ, Pilling M, Grande GE, Short V, Owen-Jones E, Evans CJ, Benalia H, Higginson IJ, Todd CJ; MORECare. Recommendations for managing missing data, attrition and response shift in palliative and end-of-life care research: part of the MORECare research method guidance on statistical issues. Palliat Med. 2013;27(10):899-907. PMID: 23652842
Evans CJ, Benalia H, Preston NJ, Grande G, Gysels M, Short V, Daveson BA, Bausewein C, Todd C, Higginson IJ; MORECare. The selection and use of outcome measures in palliative and end-of-life care research: the MORECare International Consensus Workshop. J Pain Symptom Manage. 2013;46(6):925-37. PMID: 23628515
Gysels M, Evans CJ, Lewis P, Speck P, Benalia H, Preston NJ, Grande GE, Short V, Owen-Jones E, Todd CJ, Higginson IJ. MORECare research methods guidance development: recommendations for ethical issues in palliative and end-of-life care research. Palliat Med. 2013;27(10):908-17. PMID: 23695828
Farquhar M, Preston N, Evans CJ, Grande G, Short V, Benalia H, Higginson IJ, Todd C; MOREcare. Mixed methods research in the development and evaluation of complex interventions in palliative and end-of-life care: report on the MORECare consensus exercise. J Palliat Med. 2013;16(12):1550-1560. PMID: 24195755