BACKGROUND Systematic reviews should specify all outcomes at the protocol stage. Pre-specification helps prevent outcome choice from being influenced by knowledge of included study results. Completely specified outcomes comprise five elements: (1) domain (title), (2) specific measurement (technique/instrument), (3) specific metric (data format for analysis), (4) method of aggregation (how group data are summarised), and (5) time points. This study aims to assess the completeness of outcome pre-specification in systematic reviews of interventions to improve food security, specifically food availability, in low- and middle-income countries, as well as to assess the comparability of outcome elements across reviews reporting the same outcome domains. METHODS We will examine systematic reviews from an ongoing overview of systematic reviews, which assessed the effects of interventions addressing food insecurity through improving food production, access, or utilisation compared with no intervention or a different intervention, on nutrition outcomes. We will examine the original protocols; if unavailable, we will examine the "Methods" section of the systematic reviews' most recent version. One investigator will identify and group all outcome domains that the authors of the included protocols intended to measure in the systematic review and a second investigator will verify the domains. For outcome domains reported in at least 25% of protocols, one author will extract data using a pre-specified form and a second author will verify the data. We will use descriptive statistics to report the number, types, and degree of specification of outcomes in included protocols. We will assess the extent of completeness of outcome pre-specification based on the number of outcome elements (out of five). We will assess comparability of outcome domains through examining how individual elements are described across SRs reporting the same outcome domains. DISCUSSION Our findings will contribute to understanding about the best approach to pre-specify outcomes for systematic reviews and primary research in the field of food security.

中文翻译：

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评估粮食安全系统评价结果的完整性和可比性：方法学研究方案。


背景 系统评价应明确方案阶段的所有结果。预先指定有助于防止结果选择受到所包含研究结果知识的影响。完全指定的结果包括五个要素：（1）领域（标题），（2）具体测量（技术/仪器），（3）具体指标（用于分析的数据格式），（4）聚合方法（如何汇总组数据） ）和（5）时间点。本研究旨在评估低收入和中等收入国家改善粮食安全（特别是粮食供应）的干预措施的系统审查中结果预先设定的完整性，并评估报告相同内容的审查结果要素的可比性结果域。方法 我们将从对系统评价的持续概述中进行系统评价，该评价通过改善粮食生产、获取或利用来评估通过改善粮食生产、获取或利用来解决粮食不安全问题的干预措施与不干预或不同干预措施对营养结果的影响。我们将检查原始协议；如果不可用，我们将检查系统评价最新版本的“方法”部分。一名研究人员将识别并分组所包含方案的作者打算在系统评价中测量的所有结果领域，另一名研究人员将验证这些领域。对于至少 25% 的方案中报告的结果领域，一位作者将使用预先指定的形式提取数据，另一位作者将验证数据。我们将使用描述性统计来报告所包含的方案中结果的数量、类型和规范程度。 我们将根据结果要素的数量（共五个）评估结果预先规范的完整性程度。我们将通过检查报告相同结果领域的 SR 中如何描述各个元素来评估结果领域的可比性。讨论 我们的研究结果将有助于了解预先确定粮食安全领域系统评价和初步研究结果的最佳方法。