News Release

Methods in most prediction studies do not follow guidelines

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PLOS

In this week's PLoS Medicine, Walter Bouwmeester of the University Medical Center Utrecht, the Netherlands and colleagues investigate the reporting and methods of prediction studies in 2008 in six top international general medical journals. The authors' findings reveal that the majority of prediction studies do not follow current methodological recommendations.

The authors state: "We identified poor reporting and poor methods in many published prediction studies, which limits the reliability and applicability of the published findings…Only a very small minority of the papers involved the most useful approaches in predicting participant clinical outcomes, namely, external validations or impact assessments of a previously developed prediction model."

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Funding: We acknowledge the support of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (projects 9120.8004 and 918.10.615) (http://www.nwo.nl/). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Citation: Bouwmeester W, Zuithoff NPA, Mallett S, Geerlings MI, Vergouwe Y, et al. (2012) Reporting and Methods in Clinical Prediction Research: A Systematic Review. PLoS Med 9(5): e1001221. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001221

IN YOUR COVERAGE PLEASE USE THIS URL TO PROVIDE ACCESS TO THE FREELY AVAILABLE PAPER (THIS LINK WILL BECOME LIVE WHEN THE EMBARGO LIFTS): http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1001221

CONTACT:
Walter Bouwmeester
Julius Center for Health Sciences and Primary Care
Universitary Medical Center Utrecht
Heidelberglaan 100
Utrecht 3584 CX
The Netherlands
+31887568644
w.bouwmeester@umcutrecht.nl


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