ABSTRACT
The aim of this research was to investigate the quality of studies on the prevalence of psychiatric disorders in Iran. All studies on the prevalence of psychiatric disorders among Iraniangeneral population as well as school children over 15 were identified through searching several databases including PubMed, ISI WOS, PsychINFO, CINAHL, Irandoc, EMBASE, IranPsych, IranMedex, and Scientific Information Database as well as reference lists of the accessed documents, unpublished reports, conference proceedings and dissertations. The original studies, which contained an estimation of the prevalence of "any psychiatric disorder" [overall prevalence] among a sample of general population or high school students in the country were selected. A quality assessment checklist was developed based on the following criteria: accurate description of research questions, random sampling, representativeness of the study sample for a defined target population, using the same method of data collection for the entire sample, using valid and reliable tools, and proper analysis of the results. The assessment was performed on those studies on the prevalence of any psychiatric disorder in the country that had used random sampling [43 studies]. It showed that in only about 40% of the studies the sample was representative of the target population. In more than 25% of the studies, validity and reliability of the Persian translation of the instruments were not assessed or were not reported. In total, nearly a third of studies had acceptable quality [random sampling, application of valid and reliable tools, and sample representing the target population]. Although this research - as part of a systematic review-was based only on a group of prevalence studies in psychiatric disorders, its findings indicated that a significant proportion of these studies are non-compliant with key quality measures. Instead of mere emphasis on increasing the number and quantity of studies, policy makers should employ strategies to improve research quality
Subject(s)
Humans , Prevalence , Quality ControlABSTRACT
Objective: The prevalence of smoking in the adolescence is a valuable indicator for prediction of national burden of smoking in the future. The aim of this systematic review is to determine the prevalence of lifetime smoking among high school students in Iran
Methods: Various search methods have been used including searching Pubmed, ISI, PsycINFO, CINAHL, Embase, IranMedex, IranPsych and database on drug abuse, as well as hand-searching. All original researches, which had described lifetime use of cigarette, hookah, and pipe among high school students were included in the study with no restriction on date of publication, and were qualitatively assessed. Subsequent to data extraction, heterogeneity test was carried out on indicators for which more than two studies were found and meta-analyses were performed
Results: In total, 18 studies were included in this review. The combined prevalence of lifetime cigarette smoking for boys, girls and total high school students were calculated as 30.9% [95% confidence interval [CI]: 25-36.8], 14% [95% CI: 7-20.9] and 21% [95% CI: 15.1-26.9], respectively. The combined prevalence of lifetime cigarette smoking for boys was significantly different [P<0.001] in the year 2001 and before [38.6%], with the years after 2002 [21.5%]
Conclusion: In Iran, the prevalence of smoking in this age range is lower than many other countries and in recent years, a decreasing trend was found in boys. These findings can be attributed to the national control and prevention strategies. However, some studies have several qualitative limitations, which points to the necessity of high quality repeated surveys in the future
ABSTRACT
There are few reports in the scientific literature on the factors taken into account by editors in deciding to accept or reject a scientific paper. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effects of different factors on the journal editors' decisions on whether to accept or reject the manuscripts submitted to their journals. We randomly selected the participants from the authors of original articles and case reports published in six medical journals, and sent them a questionnaire by e-mail. We analyzed the scores they gave to each of the 17 items of the questionnaire. One hundred and nineteen of the authors responded to our survey. The scores given by the respondents were analyzed comparing authors of developing and developed countries. Also, the results from authors of high- impact journals were compared with those with a low-impact factor. Multidimensional scaling was used to categorize the items based on their average scores. Highest scores were given to items addressing the quality of study performance, those addressing manuscript writing, and to the role of statistical significance of the results in the probability of studies getting published. Authors still believe in the existence of publication bias. They estimate its role to be comparable with the role of the quality of study performance and reporting. Our study also proves the presence of developing country bias, from the authors' perspective