SynthesisBMJ open2024
Do studies evaluating early-life policy interventions fully adhere to the critical conditions of difference-in-differences? A systematic review.
Synthesis in BMJ open, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
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.
- Difference-in-differences analysis with repeated cross-sectional survey data.Health services & outcomes research methodology · 2025Article
- Comment on "The North Carolina PARTNERS Program: Preparing Undergraduates for Research Careers in Cancer Prevention, Causes, and Treatment in Traditionally Underrepresented Populations".Journal of cancer education : the official journal of the American Association for Cancer Education · 2025Article
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.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectivesTo assess the reporting and methodological quality of early-life policy intervention papers that applied difference-in-differences (DiD) analysis. STUDY
designSystematic review. DATA SOURCES: Papers applying DiD of early-life policy interventions in high-income countries as identified by searching Medline, Embase and Scopus databases up to December, 2022. STUDY ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA, PARTICIPANTS AND
interventionsStudies evaluating policy interventions targeting expectant mothers, infants or children up to two years old and conducted in high income countries were included. We focused on seven critical conditions of DiD as proposed in a comprehensive checklist: data requirements, parallel trends, no-anticipation, standard statistical assumptions, common shocks, group composition and spillover.
resultsThe DiD included studies (n=19) evaluating early-life policy interventions in childhood development (n=4), healthcare utilisation and providers (n=4), nutrition programmes (n=3) and economic policies such as prenatal care expansion (n=8). Although none of the included studies met all critical conditions, the most reported and adhered to critical conditions were data requirements (n=18), standard statistical assumptions (n=11) and the parallel trends assumption (n=9). No-anticipation and spillover were explicitly reported and adhered to in two studies and one study, respectively.
conclusionsThis review highlights current deficiencies in the reporting and methodological quality of studies using DiD to evaluate early-life policy interventions. As the validity of study conclusions and consequent implications for policy depend on the extent to which critical conditions are met, this shortcoming is concerning. We recommend that researchers use the described checklist to improve the transparency and validity of their evaluations. The checklist should be further refined by adding order of importance or knock-out criteria and may also help facilitate uniform terminology. This will hopefully encourage reliable DiD evaluations and thus contribute to better policies relating to expectant mothers, infants and children.
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.