Studies to estimate the prevalence of a condition, disease or risk factor are fundamental to observational epidemiology and public health. The main STROBE reporting guideline covers three study designs: cross-sectional, case-control and cohort studies. Whilst cross-sectional studies are the study design most applicable to the measurement of prevalence, the STROBE items focus on features of analytic cross-sectional studies rather than descriptive studies. These recommendations are not precise enough to ensure that authors report how they arrived at the numerator and denominator for the prevalence estimate. A group from the University of Bern decided to develop an extension to the STROBE reporting guideline for studies of prevalence, making specific recommendations about issues that could result in selection and misclassification biases in prevalence estimates.
The group held two face-to-face meetings (August 2022 and May 2023) as part of an initiative to develop a risk of bias tool for the assessment of studies of prevalence. During these meetings, they identified a list of STROBE items that need to be revised or added to and drafted a flow chart. According to their plans, they will conduct a systematic review of the completeness of reporting based on the first draft of the checklist and online meetings to plan the next steps. A representative of the main STROBE author group is participating in this development. The group is also in discussion with the EPIC group about a possible overlap between the projects (updates to be published here).
Registered: 7 June 2023
Last updated:
Contact: Nicola Low, Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland. Email: [email protected]