2.4 Standards assessment
The COS-STAR was developed using a recommended approach for guiding minimal COS study reporting. We assessed the reporting standards of included COSs using the COS-STAR which contains 25 checklist criteria spread over six domains namely; title/abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion, and other information. The responses for each item included; “Yes - item fully compliant, partial - item not fully compliant, or No - item not compliant. We further assessed the methodological standards of included COSs used COS-STAD, which contains 12 checklist criteria spread over three domains namely; scope specification, stakeholders involved, and consensus process. These three are considered the minimum design recommendations for all COSs development. To indicate the degree of compliance, each checklist item was defined as: Yes - for total addressed; Partial - for partial addressed; and No - for not addressed. Assessments were compared, and three authors (J.Y.S. M.L.Y., and Y.G.) deliberated on how the process should be applied. The reporting standards assessment using the COS-STAR tool was independently conducted by two independent reviewers (J.Y.S. and M.L.Y.). Similarly, the methodological standards assessment using the COS-STAD checklist was independently conducted by two reviewers (J.Y.S and Y.G). Conflicts were adjudicated by a third reviewer (J.H.Z.). This article is not intended to criticize the quality of the published COSs. Therefore, we only report the compliance rates of items included in the literature, but do not score the standards of individual studies.