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Reporting guidelines lookup — which checklist does my study need?

Journals increasingly require a completed reporting checklist at submission. This is the map: every major guideline, the study design it covers, and where to get the official checklist.

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Quantitative designs

Guideline	Use for	Core content	Checklist
CONSORT 2010	Randomized controlled trials	25-item checklist + participant flow diagram (enrollment → allocation → follow-up → analysis)	Checklist ↗
SPIRIT 2013	Trial protocols	33 items for the protocol itself — required by many registries and funders	Checklist ↗
STROBE	Observational studies (cohort, case-control, cross-sectional)	22 items; separate flavors per design; STROBE-nut, RECORD and other extensions exist	Checklist ↗
STARD 2015	Diagnostic accuracy studies	30 items + flow of participants through the index test and reference standard	Checklist ↗
TRIPOD 2015 (+AI 2024)	Prediction model development/validation	Model specification, performance, validation; TRIPOD+AI covers machine-learning models	Checklist ↗
CHEERS 2022	Health economic evaluations	28 items covering perspective, discounting, sensitivity analyses	Checklist ↗
ARRIVE 2.0	Animal (in vivo) research	"Essential 10" + recommended set for design, sample size, blinding	Checklist ↗

Reviews, qualitative, and other designs

Guideline	Use for	Core content	Checklist
PRISMA 2020	Systematic reviews & meta-analyses	27 items + the flow diagram of records identified → screened → included	Checklist ↗
PRISMA-ScR	Scoping reviews	20-item adaptation of PRISMA for scoping questions	Checklist ↗
MOOSE	Meta-analyses of observational studies	Search, heterogeneity, and bias reporting specific to observational syntheses	Checklist ↗
COREQ	Qualitative interviews & focus groups	32 items: research team, methods, analysis and reporting	Checklist ↗
SRQR	Qualitative research (any method)	21 items; broader and less interview-specific than COREQ	Checklist ↗
ENTREQ	Qualitative evidence syntheses	21 items for meta-ethnography, thematic synthesis, etc.	Checklist ↗
CARE	Case reports	13-item checklist + timeline of the clinical episode	Checklist ↗
SQUIRE 2.0	Quality improvement studies	18 items adapted to iterative, context-dependent interventions	Checklist ↗
GRRAS	Reliability & agreement studies	15 items for kappa/ICC studies	Checklist ↗

The EQUATOR Network (equator-network.org) indexes all of these plus 600+ extensions — search there when your design is unusual.

How to use a reporting guideline well

Pick the guideline at the DESIGN stage, not at submission. The checklists encode what reviewers will ask ("how was the sample size determined?", "who did the interviews and what was their relationship to participants?") — knowing the items before data collection prevents unreportable gaps, like a trial with no registered protocol or a qualitative study that never recorded saturation decisions.

At submission, most journals want the checklist as a supplementary file with page numbers for each item. Fill it honestly: "not applicable" and "not done" are acceptable entries; vague page ranges spanning the whole manuscript are the reviewer red flag.

Guidelines are floors, not ceilings — CONSORT compliance does not make a trial good, it makes a trial’s quality visible. Combine the right checklist with your field’s methodological expectations.

Frequently asked questions

My study mixes methods — which checklist do I use?

There is no single dominant mixed-methods guideline; common practice is GRAMMS (Good Reporting of A Mixed Methods Study, 6 items) plus the relevant single-method checklists for each strand (e.g. STROBE for the survey strand, COREQ for the interviews). State this approach explicitly in your methods.

Do I need PRISMA for a narrative literature review?

No — PRISMA presumes a systematic search and screening process. Using it for a narrative review implies rigor that was not applied. Consider the SANRA scale for narrative reviews, or upgrade the review to a scoping review (PRISMA-ScR) if you can make the search systematic.

Where do I find extensions like CONSORT for pilot studies?

The EQUATOR Network library lists them all: CONSORT extensions for pilot/feasibility trials, cluster trials, and non-pharmacological interventions; PRISMA extensions for network meta-analyses, protocols (PRISMA-P), and searching (PRISMA-S). Search by design keyword rather than browsing.

Related free tools

Sample size calculator Sample size for two groups Effect size (Cohen's d)Descriptive statistics One-sample t-test Independent t-test Paired t-test z-table (standard normal)t-table (critical values)Chi-square table

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