Authorship bias in violence risk assessment? A systematic review and meta-analysis - PubMed (original) (raw)

Review

Authorship bias in violence risk assessment? A systematic review and meta-analysis

Jay P Singh et al. PLoS One. 2013.

Abstract

Various financial and non-financial conflicts of interests have been shown to influence the reporting of research findings, particularly in clinical medicine. In this study, we examine whether this extends to prognostic instruments designed to assess violence risk. Such instruments have increasingly become a routine part of clinical practice in mental health and criminal justice settings. The present meta-analysis investigated whether an authorship effect exists in the violence risk assessment literature by comparing predictive accuracy outcomes in studies where the individuals who designed these instruments were study authors with independent investigations. A systematic search from 1966 to 2011 was conducted using PsycINFO, EMBASE, MEDLINE, and US National Criminal Justice Reference Service Abstracts to identify predictive validity studies for the nine most commonly used risk assessment tools. Tabular data from 83 studies comprising 104 samples was collected, information on two-thirds of which was received directly from study authors for the review. Random effects subgroup analysis and metaregression were used to explore evidence of an authorship effect. We found a substantial and statistically significant authorship effect. Overall, studies authored by tool designers reported predictive validity findings around two times higher those of investigations reported by independent authors (DOR=6.22 [95% CI=4.68-8.26] in designers' studies vs. DOR=3.08 [95% CI=2.45-3.88] in independent studies). As there was evidence of an authorship effect, we also examined disclosure rates. None of the 25 studies where tool designers or translators were also study authors published a conflict of interest statement to that effect, despite a number of journals requiring that potential conflicts be disclosed. The field of risk assessment would benefit from routine disclosure and registration of research studies. The extent to which similar conflict of interests exists in those developing risk assessment guidelines and providing expert testimony needs clarification.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: All authors are occasionally hired as experts for giving talks or workshops about risk assessment. Typically, this is done as part of the authors' regular university duties (e.g. teaching students) but depending on the nature of the task and constituents, such activities are sometimes commissioned with remuneration extraneous to their academic salaries. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Figures

Figure 1

Figure 1. Results of a Systematic Search Conducted to Identify Replication Studies of Commonly Used Risk Assessment Tools.

Similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. Lexchin J, Bero LA, Djulbegovic B, Clark O (2003) Pharmaceutical industry sponsorship and research outcome and quality: Systematic review. BMJ 326: 1167–1170. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Perlis RH, Perlis CS, Wu Y, Hwang C, Joseph M, et al. (2005) Industry sponsorship and financial conflict of interest in the reporting of clinical trials in psychiatry. Am J Psychiatry 162: 1957–1960. - PubMed
    1. Bekelman JE, Li Y, Gross CP (2003) Scope and impact of financial conflicts of interest in biomedical research: A systematic review. JAMA 289: 454–465. - PubMed
    1. Singh JP (2012) The history, development, and testing of forensic risk assessment tools. In: Grigorenko E, editor. Handbook of juvenile forensic psychology and psychiatry. New York: Springer.
    1. Singh JP, Fazel S (2010) Forensic risk assessment: A metareview. Crim Justice Behav 37: 965–988.

Publication types

MeSH terms

LinkOut - more resources