Australasian EQUATOR Centre

The team

Director: Professor Tammy Hoffmann OAM

Tammy is a Professor of Clinical Epidemiology at the Institute for Evidence-Based Healthcare, Bond University. Her research spans many aspects of evidence-based practice, shared decision making, knowledge translation, and minimising waste in research. Tammy has been involved in the development of a number of reporting guidelines. As part of her interest in improving the reporting, useability, and uptake of effective non-pharmacological interventions, she led the development of the TIDieR (Template for Intervention Description and Replication) checklist and guide.

Deputy Director: Professor Paul Glasziou AO

Paul is a Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine and Director of the Institute for Evidence-Based Healthcare, Bond University. His key interests include identifying and removing the barriers to using high quality research in everyday clinical practice. He is a leader within the Reward Alliance, investigating research waste and promoting better prioritisation, design, conduct, regulation, management and reporting of health research. Other interests include overdiagnosis and overtreatment, general practice, uptake of evidence for non-drug interventions, and automation of systematic review processes.

Research staff

Associate Professor Elaine Beller

Elaine is a biostatistician and clinical trialist with more than 25 years of research experience. One of her research areas is focused on reducing the waste in research effort by improving the quality of published research reports, particularly in systematic reviews and randomised trials. Elaine led the PRISMA for Abstracts extension of the PRISMA Statement.

Assistant Professor Sharon Sanders

Sharon is a clinical epidemiologist with extensive experience in evidence synthesis and systematic reviews of all types. She is a meta-researcher who has assessed research reporting against research reporting guidelines, with a view to helping improve the integrity and reporting of future research. She works with students, researchers and clinician researchers to enhance awareness and use of reporting guidelines.

Justin Clark

Justin is the Research Enhancement Manager at the Institute for Evidence-Based Healthcare, Bond University. He is also the Cochrane Information Specialist for the Acute Respiratory Infections Group, a member of the Cochrane Information Specialists Executive and the Co-Lead of the search group of the Living Evidence Network. His work focuses on locating and retrieving information in a way that minimises workloads for research teams. He has been working on developing tools and methods for the automation of systematic reviews. He has recently led a trial evaluating one of these tools by comparing human performance using them, to human performance not using them.

Our goals

The Australasian EQUATOR (Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of health Research) Centre is an international initiative that seeks to improve the reliability and value of published health research literature by promotion transparent and accurate reporting and wider use of robust reporting guidelines.

In addition to helping carry out the strategic vision of the EQUATOR network in Australia and the Asia-Pacific region, the focus of the Australasian EQUATOR Centre is on reducing waste and enhancing the value of biomedical research.

Projects

Examples of our current activities include:

Improving the descriptions of interventions in research (such as trials and systematic reviews) and developing online tools to enable authors to more easily create complete descriptions of interventions
Developing tools, including automation tools, that enable many steps in the systematic review process to be done faster and more efficiently
Undertaking research in research waste and creating resources to increase the value of research
Contributing to the creation and/or updating of key reporting guidelines (e.g. TIDieR, PRISMA, STARD, PRISMA for Abstracts)
Providing training activities within the Australasian region in research reporting, publication skills, and research protocols.

Collaborators

Publications

Sanders, S., Gibson, E., Glasziou, P., & Hoffmann, T. (2023). Non-drug interventions for reducing SARS-CoV-2 transmission are frequently incompletely reported. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 157, 102-109.
Kahan, B. C., Hall, S. S., Beller, E. M., Birchenall, M., Chan, A-W., Elbourne, D., Little, P., Fletcher, J., Golub, R. M., Goulao, B., Hopewell, S., Islam, N., Zwarenstein, M., Juszczak, E., & Montgomery, A. A. (2023). Reporting of Factorial Randomized Trials: Extension of the CONSORT 2010 Statement. JAMA, 330(21), 2106-2114.
Kahan, B. C., Hall, S. S., Beller, E. M., et al. (2023). Consensus Statement for Protocols of Factorial Randomized Trials: Extension of the SPIRIT 2013 Statement. JAMA network open, 6(12), e2346121.
Leite, M. N., Hoffmann, T. C., Helal, L., Umpierre, D., & Yamato, T. P. (2023). Helping to know about the intervention: The Template for Intervention Description and Replication (TIDieR) checklist is now available in Brazilian Portuguese. Brazilian Journal of Physical Therapy, 27(1), 100483. (Editorial)
Rhon, D. I., Fritz, J. M., Kerns, R. D., McGeary, D. D., Coleman, B. C., Farrokhi, S., ... & Hoffmann, T. (2022). TIDieR-telehealth: precision in reporting of telehealth interventions used in clinical trials-unique considerations for the Template for the Intervention Description and Replication (TIDieR) checklist. BMC Medical Research Methodology, 22(1), 161.
Glenton, C., Carlsen, B., Winje, B. A., Eilers, R., Wennekes, M. D., Hoffmann, T. C., & Lewin, S. (2022). Using qualitative research to develop an elaboration of the TIDieR checklist for interventions to enhance vaccination communication. Health Research Policy and Systems, 20(1), 31.
Kahan, B. C., Tsui, M., Jairath, V., Scott, A. M., Altman, D. G., Beller, E., & Elbourne, D. (2020). Reporting of randomized factorial trials was frequently inadequate. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 117, 52-59.
Beller, E. M., Glasziou, P. P., Altman, D. G., Hopewell, S., Bastian, H., Chalmers, I., ... & PRISMA for Abstracts Group. (2013). PRISMA for abstracts: reporting systematic reviews in journal and conference abstracts. PLoS medicine, 10(4), e1001419.
Beller, E. M., Glasziou, P. P., Hopewell, S., & Altman, D. G. (2011). Reporting of effect direction and size in abstracts of systematic reviews. Jama, 306(18), 1981-1982.

Reporting Guidelines Webinar 2024

Presented by Professors Paul Glasziou, Tammy Hoffmann, Ginny Barbour and Dr. Matthew Page. This webinar covers what you need to know to efficiently and accurately write up and publish your research, to clearly communicate your findings. It will help you avoid the common mistakes and improve your chances of publication.

During this presentation you will gain the skills to:

Write the key sections of a research article efficiently and effectively.
Use reporting guidelines such as PRISMA, CONSORT and STROBE to guide the writing task, assist publication, & improve the impact of your research.
Respond to and provide constructive peer review.

Reporting Guidelines Webinar 2024