A quality evaluation of nursing intervention studies in Mainland China: From 1979 to 2012

Background: The number of papers published in the field of nursing practice has greatly increased in recent years in Mainland China, yet the quality of these papers is highly variable. There has been no attempt to comprehensively estimate the overall quantity and quality of these papers. Objectives: To systematically retrieve nursing intervention studies published in simplified Chinese from 1979 to 2012, critically appraise their quality, and provide suggestions for future development. Methods: All of the papers were retrieved from China Biology Medicine disc database. The preliminary screening of retrieved publications was performed prior to conducting a rigorous quality evaluation of the remaining publications. 10 characteristics would be included in consideration in quality evaluations. Results: 69,150 papers were retrieved according to searching strategy. 7391 of them were included after preliminary screening and appraised critically. Among the 10 characteristics considered in quality evaluations, the lowest ratings were observed for the factors of “utilisation of blind method” (13 articles), “description of loss of follow-up” (499 articles), “appropriate calculation of sample size” (511 articles) and “randomised assignment of patients to treatments” (652 articles). Conclusions: Chinese papers published in the field of nursing practice have increased over time, but improvements remain needed to ensure that thorough studies with high-quality research methodologies are being performed. Future nursing researchers should not only improve the design of their intervention studies but also clearly describe the methodology they used, especially in group randomisation, blinded research designs, and estimations of required sample sizes