eng Science and Education Publishing American Journal of Public Health Research 2327-6703 2013-08-16 1 1 183 190 10.12691/ajphr-1-7-7 AJPHR2013177 article Tatyana Shamliyan t.shamliyan@elsevier.com 1 2 Mohammed T. Ansari 3 Gowri Raman 4 Nancy Berkman 5 Mark Grant 6 Gail Janes 7 Margaret Maglione 8 David Moher 8 Mona Nasser 9 Karen Robinson 10 Jodi Segal 10 Sophia Tsouros 10 Division of Health Policy and Management, University of Minnesota School of Public Health, Minneapolis Clinical Epidemiology Methods Centre, Ottawa Health Research Institute, Ottawa Tufts University Medical Center, Boston RTI International ¨C University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, Chicago Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta Southern California EPC; RAND Corporation, Santa Monica University of Plymouth, Peninsula Dental School, Plymouth, UK Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore We aimed to develop quality checklists for observational non-therapeutic studies. Based on a systematic review of current practices of quality assessment of observational studies, collaborating co-authors from Evidence-based Practice Centers and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention developed a new checklist for studies examining incidence and prevalence of chronic conditions, evaluated face and content validity, and discrimination validity to distinguish reporting from methodological quality. This new checklist is available in text format or as a relational database to produce standardized reports with flaws in reporting quality, external (six criteria), and internal (five criteria) validity of the studies. Study and hypotheses (subgroups) level analyses are possible with predetermined in protocol templates criteria of major and minor flaws. Consensus around justified research specific methodological standards and reliability tests should precede quality evaluation of primary studies to assure confidence in quality assessment. To be effective, policy decisions should be made based on comprehensive systematic evidence reviews that include transparent, standardized quality appraisals. Implementation of the developed checklists would increase transparency and quality of research leading to effective informed decisions in health care. http://pubs.sciepub.com/ajphr/1/7/7/ajphr-1-7-7.pdf risk factors morbidity reproducibility of results validation studies bias (epidemiology) quality control review literature as topic