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Table 2 Summary of main changes in STARD 2015

From: Updating standards for reporting diagnostic accuracy: the development of STARD 2015

Section

Authors are invited to..

Title/abstract

report a structured abstract, according to STARD for Abstracts (item 2).

Introduction

report the intended use and clinical role of the index test under investigations (item 3), along with specific study hypotheses (item 4).

Methods

report whether test positivity cutoffs or result categories were pre-specified or exploratory (item 12), whether analyses of variability in diagnostic accuracy were pre-specified or exploratory (item 17), and how they determined the intended sample size (item 18).

Results

always provide a diagram, illustrating the flow of participants through the study (item 19).

Discussion

discuss potential study limitations (item 26) and the implications for practice of the study findings (item 27).

Other information

report the registration number (item 28), where the full study protocol can be accessed (item 29), and sources of funding (item 30).

  1. A detailed overview of the changes made in STARD 2015, and the rationale for these changes, is provided in Additional file 9