This article explores policy implications and selected methodological topics relating to long-term care (LTC) quality. We first discuss the Teaching Nursing Home Program (TNHP), in which quality of care in teaching nursing homes (TNHs) was found to be superior to the quality of care in comparison nursing homes (CNHs). A combination of outcome and process/structural measures was used to evaluate...

OBJECTIVE To provide a descriptive overview of the clinical trials assessing meditation practices for health care. DESIGN Systematic review of the literature. Comprehensive searches were conducted in 17 electronic bibliographic databases through September 2005. Other sources of potentially relevant studies included hand searches, reference tracking, contacting experts, and gray literature sea...

STUDY QUESTION Are there differences in the methodological quality of Cochrane systematic reviews (CRs) and non-Cochrane systematic reviews (NCRs) of assisted reproductive technologies? SUMMARY ANSWER CRs on assisted reproduction are of higher methodological quality than similar reviews published in other journals. WHAT IS KNOWN ALREADY The quality of systematic reviews varies. STUDY DESI...

BACKGROUND There are several scales used to detect apathy in disease populations. Since apathy is a prevalent symptom in many neurodegenerative diseases, this is an especially important context in which to identify and compare scales. AIMS To provide an overview of apathy scales validated in generic and specific neurodegenerative disease populations, compare validation studies' methodological...

BACKGROUND Previous research has linked sedentary behaviour (SB) to adverse physical health outcomes in adults and youth. Although evidence for the relationship between SB and mental health outcomes (e.g., depression) is emerging, little is known regarding risk of anxiety. METHODS A systematic search for original research investigating the association between SB and risk of anxiety was perfor...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the methodological quality of published randomised controlled trials (RCTs) in burn care treatment and management. METHODS Using a predetermined search strategy we searched Ovid MEDLINE (1950 to January 2008) database to identify all English RCTs related to burn care. Full text studies identified were reviewed for key demographic and methodological characteristics. Metho...

BACKGROUND To investigate the methodological quality of randomized controlled trials in three areas of complementary medicine. METHODS The methodological quality of 207 randomized trials collected for five previously published systematic reviews on homeopathy, herbal medicine (Hypericum for depression, Echinacea for common cold), and acupuncture (for asthma and chronic headache) was assessed ...

BACKGROUND Systematic reviews (SRs) must be of high quality. The purpose of our research was to compare the methodological and reporting quality of original versus updated Cochrane SRs to determine whether updating had improved these two quality dimensions. METHODS We identified updated Cochrane SRs published in issue 4, 2002 of the Cochrane Library. We assessed the updated and original versi...

PURPOSE To develop and evaluate a scale for assessment of the methodological quality for clinical investigations of radiologic studies. MATERIALS AND METHODS A scale was developed that included methodological standards compiled from established sources for assessing the methodological quality of study designs in clinical research and characteristics related to biases commonly observed in clin...