The Institute of Medicine (Sox & Greenfield, 2009) has recently called for an increase in the number of effectiveness studies to provide practitioners with needed information to make best-practice decisions. The need for effectiveness studies and evidence supporting best treatment has become critical as health care costs continue to escalate and third-party payers increasingly deny reimbursement without a body of evidence to support intervention (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, 2007). The increased demand for effectiveness studies has led to a need for uniformity in reporting standards so that practitioners can assess the reliability and relevance of research information. Without the transparent reporting of specific criteria, practitioners cannot evaluate the applicability of a given effectiveness study.
The reporting standards presented here have two objectives: (1) to help occupational therapy researchers understand the elements needed in the design and reporting of intervention studies published in the American...
