SynthesisBMJ open2017
Are there researcher allegiance effects in diagnostic validation studies of the PHQ-9? A systematic review and meta-analysis.
Synthesis in BMJ open, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
What it found
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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.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed.
- Workplace Social Capital Subscales and Their Association With Depressive Symptoms in Japanese Research Institutions.Cureus · 2025Article
- Association of neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio with all-cause and cardiovascular mortality in US adults with diabetes and prediabetes: a prospective cohort study.BMC endocrine disorders · 2024Article
- Physical punishment and effective verbal communication in children aged 9-36 months, according to sex: secondary analysis of a national survey.BMC pediatrics · 2024Article
- A Narrative Review of Self-Reported Scales to Evaluate Depression and Anxiety Symptoms in Adult Obstructive Sleep Apnea Patients.Medicina (Kaunas, Lithuania) · 2024Review
- A cross-sectional mental-health survey of Chinese postgraduate students majoring in stomatology post COVID-19 restrictions.Frontiers in public health · 2024Article
- Article
- A Digital Mental Health Intervention (Inuka) for Common Mental Health Disorders in Zimbabwean Adults in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic: Feasibility and Acceptability Pilot Study.JMIR mental health · 2022Article
- A cross-sectional examination of conflict-of-interest disclosures of physician-authors publishing in high-impact US medical journals.BMJ open · 2022Article
- Screening for Depression in Mobile Devices Using Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) Data: A Diagnostic Meta-Analysis via Machine Learning Methods.Neuropsychiatric disease and treatment · 2021Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectivesTo investigate whether an authorship effect is found that leads to better performance in studies conducted by the original developers of the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) (allegiant studies).
designSystematic review with random effects bivariate diagnostic meta-analysis. Search strategies included electronic databases, examination of reference lists and forward citation searches. INCLUSION CRITERIA: Included studies provided sufficient data to calculate the diagnostic accuracy of the PHQ-9 against a gold standard diagnosis of major depression using the algorithm or the summed item scoring method at cut-off point 10. DATA EXTRACTION: Descriptive information, methodological quality criteria and 2×2 contingency tables.
resultsSeven allegiant and 20 independent studies reported the diagnostic performance of the PHQ-9 using the algorithm scoring method. Pooled diagnostic OR (DOR) for the allegiant group was 64.40, and 15.05 for non-allegiant studies group. The allegiance status was a significant predictor of DOR variation (p<0.0001).Five allegiant studies and 26 non-allegiant studies reported the performance of the PHQ-9 at recommended cut-off point of 10. Pooled DOR for the allegiant group was 49.31, and 24.96 for the non-allegiant studies. The allegiance status was a significant predictor of DOR variation (p=0.015).Some potential alternative explanations for the observed authorship effect including differences in study characteristics and quality were found, although it is not clear how some of them account for the observed differences.
conclusionsAllegiant studies reported better performance of the PHQ-9. Allegiance status was predictive of variation in the DOR. Based on the observed differences between independent and non-independent studies, we were unable to conclude or exclude that allegiance effects are present in studies examining the diagnostic performance of the PHQ-9. This study highlights the need for future meta-analyses of diagnostic validation studies of psychological measures to evaluate the impact of researcher allegiance in the primary studies.
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