SynthesisPloS one2013
Authorship bias in violence risk assessment? A systematic review and meta-analysis.
Synthesis in PloS one, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Violence risk assessment instruments in forensic psychiatric populations: a systematic review and meta-analysis.The lancet. Psychiatry · 2023Pooled it
- A Systematic Review on Clinimetric Properties of Play Instruments for Occupational Therapy Practice.Occupational therapy international · 2020Pooled it
- Are there researcher allegiance effects in diagnostic validation studies of the PHQ-9? A systematic review and meta-analysis.BMJ open · 2017Pooled it
- Are risk assessment tools more accurate than unstructured judgments in predicting violent, any, and sexual offending? A meta-analysis of direct comparison studies.Behavioral sciences & the lawPooled it
- Authorship network bias in meta-analysis.Research synthesis methods · 2026Article
- Scientific guidelines for evaluating the validity of forensic feature-comparison methods.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Understanding risk with FOTRES?AI and ethics · 2023Article
- Calibrating violence risk assessments for uncertainty.General psychiatry · 2023Review
- Outcome Measures in Forensic Mental Health Services: A Systematic Review of Instruments and Qualitative Evidence Synthesis.European psychiatry : the journal of the Association of European Psychiatrists · 2021Article
- The HCR-20 and violence risk assessment - will a peak of inflated expectations turn to a trough of disillusionment?BJPsych bulletin · 2020Article
- Can authorship bias be detected in meta-analysis?Canadian journal of anaesthesia = Journal canadien d'anesthesie · 2019Article
- Exploring a new structured professional judgment measure (impulsivity measure related to violence) after an average follow-up of 10 years: A study of Finnish offenders.Criminal behaviour and mental health : CBMH · 2019Article
- A Clinical Feasibility Study of the Forensic Psychiatry and Violence Oxford (FoVOx) Tool.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2019Article
- Prediction of violent crime on discharge from secure psychiatric hospitals: A clinical prediction rule (FoVOx).European psychiatry : the journal of the Association of European Psychiatrists · 2018Article
- Risk assessment tools in criminal justice and forensic psychiatry: The need for better data.European psychiatry : the journal of the Association of European Psychiatrists · 2017Article
- The limitations and future of violence risk assessment.World psychiatry : official journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) · 2017Article
- Response to "The Use of Meta-Analysis to Compare and Select Offender Risk Instruments".International journal of forensic mental health · 2017Article
- Covert and Implicit Influences on the Interpretation of Violence Risk Instruments.Psychiatry, psychology, and law : an interdisciplinary journal of the Australian and New Zealand Association of Psychiatry, Psychology and Law · 2017Article
- Prediction of violent reoffending on release from prison: derivation and external validation of a scalable tool.The lancet. Psychiatry · 2016Article
- Mortality, Rehospitalisation and Violent Crime in Forensic Psychiatric Patients Discharged from Hospital: Rates and Risk Factors.PloS one · 2016Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
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.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.