ArticleActa neurochirurgica2024
A survey of surveys: an evaluation of the quality of published surveys in neurosurgery.
Article in Acta neurochirurgica, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers, 1 of them a synthesis 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
2 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 1 citations in OpenAlex.
- Surveys of Knowledge and Awareness of Plastic Pollution and Risk Reduction Behavior in the General Population: A Systematic Review.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2025Pooled it
- Preresidency Fellowships in Neurosurgery: A Multi-Institutional, Cross-Sectional Survey of Utility and Outcomes.Neurosurgery practice · 2026Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
purposeSurveys generate valuable data in epidemiologic and qualitative clinical research. The quality of a survey depends on its design, the number of responses it receives, and the reporting of the results. In this study, we aimed to assess the quality of surveys in neurosurgery.
methodsNeurosurgical surveys published between 2000 and 2020 (inclusive) were identified from PubMed. Various datapoints regarding the surveys were collated. The number of citations received by the papers was determined from Google Scholar. A 6-dimensional quality assessment tool was applied to the surveys. Parameters from this tool were combined with the number of responses received to create the survey quality score (SQS).
resultsA total of 618 surveys were included for analysis. The target sample size correlated with the number of responses received. The response rate correlated positively with the target sample size and the number of reminders sent and negatively with the number of questions in the survey. The median number of authors on neurosurgery survey papers was 6. The number of authors correlated with the SQS and the number of citations received by published survey papers. The median normalized SQS for neurosurgical surveys was 65%. The nSQS independently predicted the citations received per year by surveys.
conclusionsThe modifiable factors that correlated with improvements in survey design were optimizing the number of questions, maximizing the target sample size, and incorporating reminders in the survey design. Increasing the number of contributing authors led to improvements in survey quality. The SQS was validated and correlated well with the citations received by surveys.
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.