3.2 Compliance rates of COS-STAR standards
The compliance rates of 8 standards, mainly focusing on the introduction and discussion sections, were >85%. Moreover, the development protocol or registration details was accessible in 56.8% of COSs; 68.2 % of COSs described the sources of information for the initial list of outcomes, 65.9% of COSs described how outcomes were dropped/combined, and 56.8% of COSs outlined the final COS. 22 COSs did not describe how outcomes were scored and how scores were summarized; and 14 COSs did not describe whether members of the team had any conflict of interest. The compliance rates of 10 standards on the COS-STAR assessment were less than 55%. These included: ”Identify in the title that the paper reports the development of a COS”, ”Describe the rationale for stakeholder groups involved in the COS”, ”the sources of information for the initial list of outcomes”, ”Describe how the consensus process was undertaken”, ”Provide a statement regarding the ethics and consent issues for the study”, ”Describe any changes from the protocol”, ”Present data on the number and relevant characteristics of the people involved at all stages of COS development”, ”List all outcomes considered at the start of the consensus process”, ”Describe any new outcomes introduced and any outcomes dropped”, and ”Describe sources of funding/role of funders”. (Fig.4)
Total COS-STAR compliance standards of OG COSs with the prior protocol were significantly higher than without protocol (MD= 3.846, 95% CI: 0.835 - 6.858, P= 0.012) (Table 2). Table 3 shows reporting quality of COSs. We also analyzed total compliance for each of the 25 criteria and observed the significant differences between COSs with a priori protocol and those without a priori protocol related to the criteria ”describe sources of funding/role of funders” (OR= 4.94, 95% CI:1.26-19.32, P=0.022 ), ”protocol/registry entry” (OR= 39.23, 95% CI: 2.54,606.03, P= 0.009 ), “describe the information sources used to identify an initial list of outcomes.” (OR= 2.28, 95% CI: 1.33 - 3.89, P= 0.002), “describe how outcomes were dropped/combined” (OR= 2.0, 95% CI: 1.15 - 3.47, P= 0.015), and “describe sources of funding/role of funders” (OR= 2.280 , 95% CI: 1.126 - 4.617, P= 0.022).