Abstract
Objectives
Although the collection of race and/or ethnicity data is an important way to identify
and address inequalities in health care provision and disparities in access to treatment,
studies examining the extent to which race and/or ethnicity data are reported in the
medical literature, and the quality of these data, are lacking. Therefore, we sought
to objectively determine the quality of reporting of race and/or ethnicity in original
medical research papers.
Study Design and Setting
A retrospective bibliometric analysis was used. Two independent investigators analyzed
original articles investigating race/ethnicity, published between 2007 and 2018, in
the 10 top-ranking academic journals in each of the following categories: general
medicine, surgery, and oncology.
Results
A total of 995 original articles were included in our analysis. Only 45 studies (4.52%)
provided a formal definition of race/ethnicity, and 8.94% identified the investigator
responsible for the classification. While race/ethnicity was a key part of study design
in 31.86% of the included investigations, the method used to classify individuals
into racial/ethnic groups was described in only 10.25% of articles. In terms of terminology,
we identified 81 different race/ethnicity classifications, but these were often imprecise
and open to interpretation.
Conclusion
There is significant room for improvement in the collection, reporting, and publishing
of data describing ethnicity and/or race in the medical literature.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: November 09, 2019
Accepted:
November 6,
2019
Footnotes
Conflict of interest: Authors have no conflict of interest to disclose. This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in public, commercial, or non-for-profit sectors.
Funding: This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in public, commercial, or non-for-profit sectors.
Identification
Copyright
© 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
