Ann Am Thorac Soc. 2024 Jun 18. doi: 10.1513/AnnalsATS.202312-1074OC. Online ahead of print.
ABSTRACT
RATIONALE: Women, older individuals, and racial and ethnic minority groups are often underrepresented in research studies.
OBJECTIVES: We evaluated the demographics and diversity of participants enrolled in randomized trials (RCTs) and observational studies published by investigators in association with the Canadian Critical Care Trials Group (CCCTG).
METHODS: Quantitative content analysis of peer reviewed RCTs and observational studies from December 1994 to December 2022. For each publication, we extracted participant demographic variables, including sex/gender, age, race or ethnicity, sexual orientation, pregnancy status, language proficiency, income/financial status, housing, education, disability, and geography.
RESULTS: 120 publications (28 RCTs, 92 observational studies) enrolled 211,144 participants. Most (107/120, 89.2%) were multicenter studies, and 70% (84/120) were conducted exclusively in Canadian centers; 77.5% (93/120) studies enrolled adult participants, and 19.2% (23/120) enrolled pediatric participants. All studies reported participant mean or median age, 118 (98.3%) reported binary sex or gender, and 9 (7.5%) reported race or ethnicity. No justification was provided in 35 studies which listed pregnancy as an exclusion. There was infrequent reporting of housing (N=4), employment (N=2), income (N=2), and education (N=1). No studies reported language proficiency, sexual orientation, disability or geography of participants. Of the studies reporting gender, women/girls comprised 42.3% participants (range 8.9 to 67.7%). Within 9 studies reporting race or ethnicity of 2950 participants, 59.7% were white, 8% South Asian, 7% Indigenous, 3% Asian, 1% Black, 14% unknown, and 6% ‘Other’.
CONCLUSIONS: Research publications from the CCCTG infrequently report important participant demographics, and diversity of research participants is disproportionate compared to Canadian societal demographics.
PMID:38889344 | DOI:10.1513/AnnalsATS.202312-1074OC
