This study examined associations among dietary energy density, energy-adjusted diet costs, and socioeconomic indicators of study participants.
Levels of eligibility, consent, adherence and retention were used as indicators of study feasibility.
Finally, our protocol for evaluating indicators of study quality and the studies in our sample are summarized.
These characteristics included duration of follow-up and adjustment for prespecified confounders, which are potential indicators of study quality.
We considered two markers of better representativeness as indicators of study quality: studies with multiple compared with single centres and by lower losses to follow-up.
We did not use a score to assess study quality but in subgroup analyses we determined whether indicators of study quality, such as study size, number of cases, duration of follow-up, and adjustment for confounders modified the results.
Risk of bias was, therefore, considered in conjunction with other indicators of study differences (comparability of interventions, outcome measures and timings of assessments) to determine any appropriate quantitative synthesis of the trials.
Less than half (106/256) of the reviews specified assessment of the quality of the included studies in the methods section, or alluded to it by describing in the methods data extraction that included indicators of study quality.
We additionally examined indicators of study quality and reporting, including documentation of the method of randomisation, the extent of blinding and description of drop-outs based on the score proposed by Jadad and colleagues [ 12].
Routine data management and regular reports to track the accrual of patients and quality indicators of study performance are generated by EMMES and shared with the PERCH core team at JHSPH and with the site investigators.
