Evaluation of the methodology in publications describing epidemiological design for dental research: a critical analysis

Resumo

Introduction and objective: To describe, analyze, and critically
review the methodology employed in dental epidemiological research
available on electronic databases, evaluating their structures according
to Strobe and Consort initiative. Material and methods: ISI Web of
knowledge, Scopus, and Pubmed electronic databases were selected
for literature research, gathering publications in dental epidemiological
area using the following designs: cross-sectional, cohort, case-control,
descriptive, experimental, and quasi-experimental. Subsequently, five
specific dentistry journals were selected and had their abstracts content
analyzed under Strobe and Consort statement criterion. Results: From
a universe of 10,160 articles from Pubmed (the greatest number), only
3,198 could be classified according to their epidemiological design
by the electronic database searching tool. The most common designs
were cross-sectional, cohort, case-control, descriptive, experimental
and quasi-experimental publications, showing a tendency towards
occurring bias and confounding factors in literature research due
to missing words in papers structure. Even though Consort and Strobe initiatives have been accomplished since 2001 and 2004
respectively, some publications are not suitable for their checklist.
Conclusion: Consort and Strobe statements must be strengthened by
dental journals, editors and reviewers to improve the quality of the
studies, attempting to avoid any sort of bias or confounding factors
in the literature research performed by electronic database.