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Is funding source related to study reporting quality in obesity or nutrition randomized control trials in top-tier medical journals?

International Journal of Obesity volume 36, pages 977–981 (2012)Cite this article

Abstract

Background:

Faithful and complete reporting of trial results is essential to the validity of the scientific literature. An earlier systematic study of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) found that industry-funded RCTs appeared to be reported with greater quality than non-industry-funded RCTs. The aim of this study was to examine the association between systematic differences in reporting quality and funding status (that is, industry funding vs non-industry funding) among recent obesity and nutrition RCTs published in top-tier medical journals.

Methods:

Thirty-eight obesity or nutrition intervention RCT articles were selected from high-profile, general medical journals (The Lancet, Annals of Internal Medicine, JAMA and the British Medical Journal) published between 2000 and 2007. Paired papers were selected from the same journal published in the same year, one with and the other without industry funding. The following identifying information was redacted: journal, title, authors, funding source and institution(s). Then three raters independently and blindly rated each paper according to the Chalmers method, and total reporting quality scores were calculated.

Findings:

The inter-rater reliability (Cronbach's alpha) was 0.82 (95% confidence interval=0.80–0.84). The total mean (M) and s.d. of Chalmers Index quality score (out of a possible 100) for industry-funded studies were M=84.5, s.d.=7.04 and for non-industry-funded studies they were M=79.4, s.d.=13.00. A Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed-ranks test indicates no significant rank difference in the distributions of total quality scores between funding sources, Z=−0.966, P=0.334 (two tailed).

Interpretation:

Recently published RCTs on nutrition and obesity that appear in top-tier journals seem to be equivalent in quality of reporting, regardless of funding source. This may be a result of recent reporting of quality statements and efforts of journal editors to raise all papers to a common standard.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by NIH grants R01DK078826, P30DK056336 and T32HL007457.

Disclaimer

The opinions expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily the NIH or any organization with which the authors are affiliated.

Author contributions

David Allison—conceived the project, supervised the execution, designed the analysis plan, and contributed to the drafting and editing of the manuscript. Kathryn Kaiser—managed the resolution of the coding, performed the analysis, contributed to the writing and editing of the manuscript. Stacey Cofield—assisted with selection of the coding system, supervised data collection, assisted with coding scheme and analysis plan. Olivia Affuso—assisted with coding scheme and analysis. Mark Beasley—assisted with analysis, editing of manuscript. All others—scored papers, entered data and provided comments on the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biostatistics, School of Public Health, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA

    K A Kaiser, S S Cofield, M Beasley & D B Allison

  2. Nutrition Obesity Research Center, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA

    K A Kaiser, O Affuso & D B Allison

  3. Department of Health, Behavior and Society, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA

    K R Fontaine

  4. Division of Preventive Medicine, School of Medicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA

    S P Glasser

  5. Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada

    L Thabane & R Chu

  6. Department of Medicine, New York Medical College, Valhalla, NY, USA

    S Ambrale

  7. Department of Nutrition Sciences, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA

    A D Dwary & G Nayyar

  8. Department of Behavioral Neurobiology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA

    A Kumar

  9. Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA

    O Affuso

Authors
  1. K A Kaiser
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  2. S S Cofield
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  3. K R Fontaine
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  4. S P Glasser
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  5. L Thabane
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  7. S Ambrale
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  8. A D Dwary
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  9. A Kumar
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  10. G Nayyar
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  11. O Affuso
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  12. M Beasley
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  13. D B Allison
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to D B Allison.

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Competing interests

Dr Allison has received grants, honoraria, donations, royalties, and consulting fees from numerous publishers, food, beverage, pharmaceutical companies, and other commercial and nonprofit entities with interests in obesity and randomized controlled trials.

Appendix

Appendix

Table A1

Table a1 Paired papers rated for this analysis
Full size table

Table A2

Table a2 Points assigned per answer option per Chalmers’ item weighting schemea,10
Full size table

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Kaiser, K., Cofield, S., Fontaine, K. et al. Is funding source related to study reporting quality in obesity or nutrition randomized control trials in top-tier medical journals?. Int J Obes 36, 977–981 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/ijo.2011.207

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ijo.2011.207

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