Quantity and quality are increasing but there's room for improvement: A scoping review of physical activity intervention trials.
Marina B Pinheiro, Ana Helena S Reis, Jennifer N Baldwin and 5 others
PMID 38574557WHAT IT FOUND
Physical activity trials are increasing in number and quality, but nearly half of recent studies still have fair to poor methodological quality.
Journal impact factor is only weakly associated with trial quality, so it should not be used alone to judge reliability.
Key findings
01The mean methodological quality score of physical activity trials was 5.3 out of 10, which is considered fair quality, and about half of trials published between 2016 and 2020 scored below the threshold for good quality.
02Journal impact factor showed only a small correlation with trial quality, meaning high-impact journals do not reliably publish higher-quality physical activity trials.
03Common methodological weaknesses included lack of assessor blinding, poor allocation concealment, limited use of intention-to-treat analysis, and high rates of loss to follow-up.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTs
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What it does not show
The review only included trials indexed in PEDro, which may miss some relevant studies. Trial quality was judged based on reporting, not actual conduct, so unreported good practices may have been scored as poor. Screening was performed on titles and abstracts only due to the large number of articles. The analysis did not distinguish between different types of physical activity interventions.
Declared interests
Several authors have affiliations with the PEDro Steering Committee or its training sub-committee, which is the database used for the analysis. The remaining authors declared no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that a physical activity trial published in a high-impact journal is methodologically sound. The association between journal impact factor and trial quality was weak, and nearly half of recent trials still had fair to poor quality.