TURKISH JOURNAL OF ONCOLOGY 2008 , Vol 23 , Num 2
Identification of the criteria list for evaluation of the scientific quality of clinical oncology research
Hilal KÖKSALAN,1 Mustafa ŞENOCAK2
1 İstanbul Üniversitesi Onkoloji Enstitüsü, İstanbul
2 İstanbul Üniversitesi Cerrahpaşa Tıp Fakültesi, Biyoistatistik Bilim Dalı, İstanbul
OBJECTIVES
Checklists and scales are the obligatory terms in international journals for quality control of randomized controlled clinical trials. The aim of this study was to determine the acceptability, applicability and importance of methodological criteria selected from generally accepted scales.

METHODS
In this study, all selected methodological items of well-known checklists and scales (Jadad, Delphi, PEDro and CONSORT) were documented considering oncology subfields, and two different questionnaire forms “Methodology” and “Publication” were established. Questionnaires were completed by the physicians working as researchers in surgical, radiation and medical oncology.

RESULTS
Our findings revealed that research in the different subfields of oncology ( surgical, radiation and medical oncology) approaches difference from one other therefore it is not possible to determine oncology spesific scale.

CONCLUSION
It is obvious that there seems to be a great difficulty in establishing only one scale due to the various applications. Therefore, instead of general scaling, setting an interrogation scaling that is specific to a basic field may be more realistic and efficient. Keywords : Clinical research; methodology; oncology; randomization; scaling