New checklist to help researchers accurately and consistently report consensus methods used in biomedical research

Author Interview:

1. Why did you create this reporting guideline?

We created this reporting guideline because consensus methods are widely used to produce recommendations in research and patient care, and so it is important to be able to judge how well they were conducted and how relevant these results might be.

1. How did you go about this?

We assembled an international steering committee of clinicians, journal editors, guideline and consensus experts, publication professionals and patients to look at how consensus methods are currently reported and then develop best practice in consensus reporting. 

1. What most surprised or interested you when you were creating this checklist?

We were surprised at how much published literature there is on poor reporting of consensus methods, but a comprehensive reporting guideline had not been developed.

1. What impact do you hope the ACCORD checklist might have?

We hope that the ACCORD checklist will help researchers to report consensus processes more fully, and help readers assess their results critically and apply them appropriately.

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In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available paper in PLOS Medicine: http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1004326

Article Title: ACCORD (ACcurate COnsensus Reporting Document): A reporting guideline for consensus methods in biomedicine developed via a modified Delphi

Author Countries: United Kingdom, the Netherlands, United States, Canada

Funding: The project did not have receive any direct funding. The employers of the other Steering Committee members agreed to contribute their employees’ time to the project. The Steering Committee members’ employers had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.