Table 1 Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) checklist to assess the quality of the cross-sectional studies
ARHQ Methodology Checklist items for Cross-Sectional study | Castro AC [9] | Berentzen NE [71] | Zhang Y [39] | De-Lima TR [38] | Kerkadi A [26] | Huang HM [34] | Byun W [33] | Safiri S [41] | Suchert, V [40] |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
(1) Define the source of information (survey, record review) |  ⊕  |  ⊕  |  ⊕  |  ⊕  |  ⊕  |  ⊕  |  ⊕  |  ⊕  |  ⊕  |
(2) List inclusion and exclusion criteria for exposed and unexposed subjects (cases and controls) or refer to previous publications |  ⊕  |  ⊕  |  ⊕  |  ⊕  |  ⊕  |  ⊕  |  ⊕  |  ⊕  |  ⊕  |
(3) Indicate time period used for identifying patients | – |  ⊕  |  ⊕  |  ⊕  | _ |  ⊕  |  ⊕  | _ |  ⊕  |
(4) Indicate whether or not subjects were consecutive if not population-based |  ⊕  | – |  ⊕  | – |  ⊕  | – |  ⊕  |  ⊕  | – |
(5) Indicate if evaluators of subjective components of study were masked to other aspects of the status of the participants | – | – | – | – | U | – | – | U | – |
(6) Describe any assessments undertaken for quality assurance purposes (e.g., test/retest of primary outcome measurements) | – | – | – | – | U | – | – | U |  ⊕  |
(7) Explain any patient exclusions from analysis |  ⊕  |  ⊕  |  ⊕  |  ⊕  | – |  ⊕  |  ⊕  | – |  ⊕  |
(8) Describe how confounding was assessed and/or controlled |  ⊕  |  ⊕  |  ⊕  |  ⊕  |  ⊕  | – |  ⊕  |  ⊕  |  ⊕  |
(9) If applicable, explain how missing data were handled in the analysis |  ⊕  |  ⊕  |  ⊕  | – |  ⊕  | – |  ⊕  |  ⊕  |  ⊕  |
(10) Summarize patient response rates and completeness of data collection | – |  ⊕  |  ⊕  |  ⊕  |  ⊕  |  ⊕  |  ⊕  |  ⊕  |  ⊕  |
(11) Clarify what follow-up, if any, was expected and the percentage of patients for which incomplete data or follow-up was obtained | – | – | – | – |  ⊕  | – | – |  ⊕  | – |
6 | 7 | 8 | 6 | 7 | 5 | 8 | 7 | 8 |