SQUIRE 2.0 (Standards for QUality Improvement Reporting Excellence): revised publication guidelines from a detailed consensus process

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.

Learn more »

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.

Learn more »

Writing applications

Reporting guidelines can help you write funding applications, ethics applications, and protocols, but they won’t make design decisions for you!

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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

SQUIRE 2.0

Provided for

Quality improvement in health care

Relevant URLs (full-text if available)

The full-text of the SQUIRE 2.0 update, published in 2015, is available from: SQUIRE 2.0

PubMed ID

Downloads

SQUIRE 2.0 checklist (PDF) - 2015 update

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

Ogrinc G, Davies L, Goodman D, Batalden P, Davidoff F, Stevens D. SQUIRE 2.0 (Standards for QUality Improvement Reporting Excellence): revised publication guidelines from a detailed consensus process.

This guideline was published simultaneously in 7 journals. You can read the guideline in any of these journals using the links below.
BMJ Qual Saf. 2015. PMID: 26369893
J Nurs Care Qual. 2015. PMID: 26429125
Am J Crit Care. 2015. PMID: 26523003
Perm J. 2015. PMID: 26517437
J Surg Res. 2015. PMID: 26515734
J Contin Educ Nurs. 2015. PMID: 26509402
J Am Coll Surg. 2016;222(3):317-323. PMID: 26385723

Additional information

Language

English

Availability in additional languages

The SQUIRE 2.0 guideline is available in Italian.

Study design

  • Quality improvement studies

Clinical area

  • No clinical specialty specified

Applies to the whole report or to individual sections of the report?

  • Whole report

Reporting guideline website URL

http://www.squire-statement.org/

Previous versions of this guideline / Guideline history

SQUIRE 1.0
The SQUIRE reporting guideline was originally published in 2008.

Davidoff F, Batalden P, Stevens D, Ogrinc G, Mooney S. Publication guidelines for quality improvement in health care: evolution of the SQUIRE project.
Qual Saf Health Care. 2008;17 Suppl 1:i3-i9. PMID: 18836063
BMJ. 2009; 338:a3152. PMID: 19153129
Jt Comm J Qual Patient Saf. 2008;34(11):681-687. PMID: 19025090
Ann Intern Med. 2008;149(9):670-676. PMID: 18981488
J Gen Intern Med. 2008;23(12):2125-2130. PMID: 18830766
Ogrinc G, Mooney SE, Estrada C, Foster T, Goldmann D, Hall LW, Huizinga MM, Liu SK, Mills P, Neily J, Nelson W, Pronovost PJ, Provost L, Rubenstein LV, Speroff T, Splaine M, Thomson R, Tomolo AM, Watts B. The SQUIRE (Standards for QUality Improvement Reporting Excellence) guidelines for quality improvement reporting: explanation and elaboration. Qual Saf Health Care. 2008;17 Suppl 1:i13-32. PMID: 18836062

Other

Additional Information