Survey of basic medical researchers on the awareness of animal experimental designs and reporting standards in China

Bin Ma; Jia-Ke Xu; Wen-Jing Wu; Hong-Yan Liu; Cheng-Kun Kou; Na Liu; Lulu Zhao

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0174530

Survey of basic medical researchers on the awareness of animal experimental designs and reporting standards in China

PLoS One. 2017 Apr 5;12(4):e0174530. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0174530. eCollection 2017.

Authors

Bin Ma^{1

2}, Jia-Ke Xu^{1

3}, Wen-Jing Wu¹, Hong-Yan Liu¹, Cheng-Kun Kou¹, Na Liu¹, Lulu Zhao^{1

3}

Affiliations

¹ Evidence-Based Medicine Center of Lanzhou University, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, China.
² Key Laboratory of Evidence Based Medicine and Knowledge Translation of Gansu Province, Lanzhou, China.
³ The First Clinical Medical College of Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, China.

Abstract

Objective: To investigate the awareness and use of the Systematic Review Center for Laboratory Animal Experimentation's (SYRCLE) risk-of-bias tool, the Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments (ARRIVE) reporting guidelines, and Gold Standard Publication Checklist (GSPC) in China in basic medical researchers of animal experimental studies.

Methods: A national questionnaire-based survey targeting basic medical researchers was carried in China to investigate the basic information and awareness of SYRCLE's risk of bias tool, ARRIVE guidelines, GSPC, and animal experimental bias risk control factors. The EpiData3.1 software was used for data entry, and Microsoft Excel 2013 was used for statistical analysis in this study. The number of cases (n) and percentage (%) of classified information were statistically described, and the comparison between groups (i.e., current students vs. research staff) was performed using chi-square test.

Results: A total of 298 questionnaires were distributed, and 272 responses were received, which included 266 valid questionnaires (from 118 current students and 148 research staff). Among the 266 survey participants, only 15.8% was aware of the SYRCLE's risk of bias tool, with significant difference between the two groups (P = 0.003), and the awareness rates of ARRIVE guidelines and GSPC were only 9.4% and 9.0%, respectively; 58.6% survey participants believed that the reports of animal experimental studies in Chinese literature were inadequate, with significant difference between the two groups (P = 0.004). In addition, only approximately 1/3 of the survey participants had read systematic reviews and meta-analysis reports of animal experimental studies; only 16/266 (6.0%) had carried out/participated in and 11/266 (4.1%) had published systematic reviews/meta-analysis of animal experimental studies.

Conclusions: The awareness and use rates of SYRCLE's risk-of-bias tool, the ARRIVE guidelines, and the GSPC were low among Chinese basic medical researchers. Therefore, specific measures are necessary to promote and popularize these standards and specifications and to introduce these standards into guidelines of Chinese domestic journals as soon as possible to raise awareness and increase use rates of researchers and journal editors, thereby improving the quality of animal experimental methods and reports.

MeSH terms

Animal Experimentation / standards*
Animals
Bias
China
Humans
Publications / standards*
Research Personnel / psychology
Research Personnel / statistics & numerical data*
Risk Factors

Grants and funding

The Project is Supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 81303147) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities(Number: lzujbky-2016-67). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.