Investigation of Risk Of Bias due to Unreported and SelecTively included results in meta-analyses of nutrition research: the ROBUST study protocol.

Dietary guidelines should be informed by systematic reviews (SRs) of the available scientific evidence. However, if the SRs that underpin dietary guidelines are flawed in their design, conduct or reporting, the recommendations contained therein may be misleading or harmful. To date there has been little empirical investigation of bias due to selective inclusion of results, and bias due to missing results, in SRs of food/diet-outcome relationships.

Methodological quality of public health guideline recommendations on vitamin D and calcium : a systematic review protocol.

Introduction: Current recommendations for vitamin D and calcium in dietary guidelines and bone health guidelines vary significantly among countries and professional organisations. It is unknown whether the methods used to develop these recommendations followed a rigourous process and how the differences in methods used may affect the recommended intakes of vitamin D and calcium. The objectives of this study are (1) collate and compare recommendations for vitamin D and calcium across guidelines, (2) appraise methodological quality of the guideline recommendations and (3) identify methodological factors that may affect the recommended intakes for vitamin D and calcium.

Autism Spectrum Disorder Symptoms and Bullying Victimization Among Children with Autism in the United States.

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience more frequent bullying victimization compared to their neurotypical peers. This study used the 2011 Survey of Pathways to Diagnosis and Services to examine associations between six Children's Social Behavior Questionnaire (CSBQ) subscales and bullying victimization among 1057 children with ASD. Bivariate results showed significant correlations between each CSBQ subscale and more frequent bullying victimization.

School context variables and students' smoking. Testing a mediation model through multilevel analysis.

Background/aims: This study applied a multilevel approach to examine the associations between school smoking policy and student smoking. It was tested whether individual characteristics are mediators of school policy effects.

Methods: On the basis of cross-sectional data from 3,364 students and school principals from 40 schools in Germany, two multilevel nonlinear regression models were computed for current smoking.

Social contexts in adolescent smoking: does school policy matter?

According to an ecological perspective in psychology and in line with social cognitive theory, smoking behaviour is determined by different social contexts (for example, peers, family and school) providing adolescents with important role models. This paper investigates the effects of personal characteristics as well as family, peer and school context variables on youth smoking behaviour. We hypothesize that school smoking policy variables predict adolescents' smoking in addition to other context variables.