Trial reportBMJ open2015
Does a research article's country of origin affect perception of its quality and relevance? A national trial of US public health researchers.
Trial report in BMJ open, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 20 papers, 2 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
20 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 54 citations in OpenAlex.
- Systematic review of early abortion services in low- and middle-income country primary care: potential for reverse innovation and application in the UK context.Globalization and health · 2020Pooled it
- Red flags for the early detection of spinal infection in back pain patients.BMC musculoskeletal disorders · 2019Pooled it
- More Biased, Yet More Informed? Documenting Me-Search Stigma Primarily Linked to Researchers' Own Group Memberships.Personality & social psychology bulletin · 2026Article
- Mapping 60 Years of Psychophysiology: A Bibliometric Analysis of Journal Performance, Authorship Trends, and Thematic Evolution.Psychophysiology · 2025Review
- Bibliometric Analysis of the Highest Cited Cosmetic Upper Facial Plastic Surgery Articles Over 50 Years.Aesthetic surgery journal. Open forum · 2025Review
- Describing and mapping scientific articles on alcohol globally for the period 2010-2021: a bibliometric analysis.BMJ open · 2022Article
- Association of International Editorial Staff With Published Articles From Low- and Middle-Income Countries.JAMA network open · 2022Article
- The research output of rod-cone dystrophy genetics.Orphanet journal of rare diseases · 2022Review
- Weak evidence of country- and institution-related status bias in the peer review of abstracts.eLife · 2021Article
- Diversity in health professional education scholarship: a document analysis of international author representation in leading journals.BMJ open · 2020Article
- Article
- The value of case reports in democratising evidence from resource-limited settings: results of an exploratory survey.Health research policy and systems · 2020Article
- A novel conceptual model and heuristic tool to strengthen understanding and capacities for health inequalities research.Health research policy and systems · 2020Article
- The effect of demographic characteristics, Country of birth and country of medical training on the peer evaluations of internal medicine resident physicians.Journal of community hospital internal medicine perspectives · 2019Article
- Knowledge translation for public health in low- and middle- income countries: a critical interpretive synthesis.Global health research and policy · 2018Review
- Measuring the bias against low-income country research: an Implicit Association Test.Globalization and health · 2017Article
- Long-term Results of a Cardiology Postgraduate Program.Arquivos brasileiros de cardiologia · 2017Article
- Do International Health Partnerships contribute to reverse innovation? a mixed methods study of THET-supported partnerships in the UK.Globalization and health · 2017Article
- Article
- 'They hear "Africa" and they think that there can't be any good services'--perceived context in cross-national learning: a qualitative study of the barriers to Reverse Innovation.Globalization and health · 2015Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issuedCorrection.2016
Authors and funding
5 authors at 4 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectivesThe source of research may influence one's interpretation of it in either negative or positive ways, however, there are no robust experiments to determine how source impacts on one's judgment of the research article. We determine the impact of source on respondents' assessment of the quality and relevance of selected research abstracts.
designWeb-based survey design using four healthcare research abstracts previously published and included in Cochrane Reviews.
settingAll Council on the Education of Public Health-accredited Schools and Programmes of Public Health in the USA.
participants899 core faculty members (full, associate and assistant professors)
interventionEach of the four abstracts appeared with a high-income source half of the time, and low-income source half of the time. Participants each reviewed the same four abstracts, but were randomly allocated to receive two abstracts with high-income source, and two abstracts with low-income source, allowing for within-abstract comparison of quality and relevance PRIMARY OUTCOME MEASURES: Within-abstract comparison of participants' rating scores on two measures--strength of the evidence, and likelihood of referral to a peer (1-10 rating scale). OR was calculated using a generalised ordered logit model adjusting for sociodemographic covariates.
resultsParticipants who received high income country source abstracts were equal in all known characteristics to the participants who received the abstracts with low income country sources. For one of the four abstracts (a randomised, controlled trial of a pharmaceutical intervention), likelihood of referral to a peer was greater if the source was a high income country (OR 1.28, 1.02 to 1.62, p<0.05).
conclusionsAll things being equal, in one of the four abstracts, the respondents were influenced by a high-income source in their rating of research abstracts. More research may be needed to explore how the origin of a research article may lead to stereotype activation and application in research evaluation.
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.