Reporting quality of scoping reviews in dental public health.

Background: The study aimed to explore reporting characteristics of scoping reviews in dental public health and the impact of some factors on the reporting quality.

Methods: This study searched for dental public health scoping reviews in PubMed and Scopus without year restrictions and restricted to English-language publications. Study selection was undertaken by two reviewers independently. One reviewer, after training, extracted data from included studies considering general study characteristics and reporting characteristics. The impact of PRISMA-ScR publication, journal endorsement, and use of study protocol on the reporting was explored.

Results: Eighty-one scoping reviews were included. Five items presented rates of appropriate reporting higher than 80% considering the overall percentage. Related to the impact of PRISMA-ScR publication, six items were found more often in scoping reviews published after the publication of PRISMA-ScR than in scoping reviews published before the publication of PRISMA-ScR. With regards to journals endorsement, only two reporting characteristics were found more often in scoping reviews published in journals that endorse the PRISMA-ScR statement than in scoping reviews published in non-endorsers journals. Last, regarding the use of the pre-specified protocol, five reporting characteristics presented differences in studies reporting the use of pre-specified protocol than in studies that did not mention the use of a protocol. All differences were statistically significant.

Conclusions: Important information is missing in the included scoping reviews demonstrating crucial reporting problems.