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Authorship Bias in Violence Risk Assessment? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Various financial and non-financial conflicts of interests have been shown to influence the reporting of research findings, particularly in clinical medicine. In this study, we examine whether this extends to prognostic instruments designed to assess violence risk. Such instruments have increasingly...

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Autores principales: Singh, Jay P., Grann, Martin, Fazel, Seena
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2013
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3759386/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24023744
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0072484
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author Singh, Jay P.
Grann, Martin
Fazel, Seena
author_facet Singh, Jay P.
Grann, Martin
Fazel, Seena
author_sort Singh, Jay P.
collection PubMed
description Various financial and non-financial conflicts of interests have been shown to influence the reporting of research findings, particularly in clinical medicine. In this study, we examine whether this extends to prognostic instruments designed to assess violence risk. Such instruments have increasingly become a routine part of clinical practice in mental health and criminal justice settings. The present meta-analysis investigated whether an authorship effect exists in the violence risk assessment literature by comparing predictive accuracy outcomes in studies where the individuals who designed these instruments were study authors with independent investigations. A systematic search from 1966 to 2011 was conducted using PsycINFO, EMBASE, MEDLINE, and US National Criminal Justice Reference Service Abstracts to identify predictive validity studies for the nine most commonly used risk assessment tools. Tabular data from 83 studies comprising 104 samples was collected, information on two-thirds of which was received directly from study authors for the review. Random effects subgroup analysis and metaregression were used to explore evidence of an authorship effect. We found a substantial and statistically significant authorship effect. Overall, studies authored by tool designers reported predictive validity findings around two times higher those of investigations reported by independent authors (DOR = 6.22 [95% CI = 4.68–8.26] in designers' studies vs. DOR = 3.08 [95% CI = 2.45–3.88] in independent studies). As there was evidence of an authorship effect, we also examined disclosure rates. None of the 25 studies where tool designers or translators were also study authors published a conflict of interest statement to that effect, despite a number of journals requiring that potential conflicts be disclosed. The field of risk assessment would benefit from routine disclosure and registration of research studies. The extent to which similar conflict of interests exists in those developing risk assessment guidelines and providing expert testimony needs clarification.
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spelling pubmed-37593862013-09-10 Authorship Bias in Violence Risk Assessment? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Singh, Jay P. Grann, Martin Fazel, Seena PLoS One Research Article Various financial and non-financial conflicts of interests have been shown to influence the reporting of research findings, particularly in clinical medicine. In this study, we examine whether this extends to prognostic instruments designed to assess violence risk. Such instruments have increasingly become a routine part of clinical practice in mental health and criminal justice settings. The present meta-analysis investigated whether an authorship effect exists in the violence risk assessment literature by comparing predictive accuracy outcomes in studies where the individuals who designed these instruments were study authors with independent investigations. A systematic search from 1966 to 2011 was conducted using PsycINFO, EMBASE, MEDLINE, and US National Criminal Justice Reference Service Abstracts to identify predictive validity studies for the nine most commonly used risk assessment tools. Tabular data from 83 studies comprising 104 samples was collected, information on two-thirds of which was received directly from study authors for the review. Random effects subgroup analysis and metaregression were used to explore evidence of an authorship effect. We found a substantial and statistically significant authorship effect. Overall, studies authored by tool designers reported predictive validity findings around two times higher those of investigations reported by independent authors (DOR = 6.22 [95% CI = 4.68–8.26] in designers' studies vs. DOR = 3.08 [95% CI = 2.45–3.88] in independent studies). As there was evidence of an authorship effect, we also examined disclosure rates. None of the 25 studies where tool designers or translators were also study authors published a conflict of interest statement to that effect, despite a number of journals requiring that potential conflicts be disclosed. The field of risk assessment would benefit from routine disclosure and registration of research studies. The extent to which similar conflict of interests exists in those developing risk assessment guidelines and providing expert testimony needs clarification. Public Library of Science 2013-09-02 /pmc/articles/PMC3759386/ /pubmed/24023744 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0072484 Text en © 2013 Singh et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Singh, Jay P.
Grann, Martin
Fazel, Seena
Authorship Bias in Violence Risk Assessment? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
title Authorship Bias in Violence Risk Assessment? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
title_full Authorship Bias in Violence Risk Assessment? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
title_fullStr Authorship Bias in Violence Risk Assessment? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
title_full_unstemmed Authorship Bias in Violence Risk Assessment? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
title_short Authorship Bias in Violence Risk Assessment? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
title_sort authorship bias in violence risk assessment? a systematic review and meta-analysis
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3759386/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24023744
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0072484
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