Development and evaluation of a quality score for abstracts

Item selection was based on scoring systems for full reports, taking into account published guidelines for structured abstracts. Interrater agreement was examined using a random sample of submissions to the American Gastroenterological Association, stratified for research type (n = 100, 1992–1995). For construct validity, the association of formal quality with acceptance for presentation was examined. A questionnaire to expert reviewers evaluated sensibility items, such as ease of use and comprehensiveness.The index comprised 19 items. The summary quality scores showed good interrater agreement (intra class coefficient 0.60 – 0.81). Good abstract quality was associated with abstract acceptance for presentation at the meeting. The instrument was found to be acceptable by expert reviewers.A quality index was developed for the evaluation of scientific meeting abstracts which was shown to be reliable, valid and useful.The presentation of research at scientific meetings is an essential part of scientific communication. The choice of which research will be presented at a meeting is usually based on peer-review of abstracts submitted by interested investigators. Only about 50% of the research projects initially submitted as conference abstracts will eventually be published as full articles in peer-reviewed journals and full publication may not occur for several years [1,2]. As a result, a published abstract from a scientific meeting is often the only permanent source of information available on the methodology and results of a research project.When writing an abstract, investigators are limited on the amount of detail on the study's methodology and results that they can include. This may partly explain the poor observer-agreement and several kinds of bias that have been demonstrated in the abstract selection procedures for various medical specialty meetings [3-9]. However, there is evidence that the quality of the presentation of information in an abstract is associated wi