Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A prospective-cohort study reporting all 22 STROBE items in the methods.
- Is an instance
A case-control study using STROBE as its journal-required checklist.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A randomised controlled trial (CONSORT).
- Not an instance
A systematic review (PRISMA).
Editorial commentary
STROBE (STrengthening the Reporting of OBservational studies in Epidemiology) is a reporting checklist for observational study designs, published by von Elm and colleagues for the STROBE Initiative in 2007 (concurrently in PLoS Medicine, Annals of Internal Medicine, and Epidemiology). STROBE addresses the reporting gap that CONSORT — see the sibling term CONSORT 2010 — does not cover: CONSORT governs randomized controlled trials, while STROBE governs the three main observational designs (cohort, case-control, and cross-sectional studies) where no intervention is being tested.
Checklist structure
STROBE is a 22-item checklist organized by manuscript section: Title and Abstract (items 1a-1b); Introduction (items 2-3, covering background/rationale and objectives); Methods (items 4-12e, covering study design, setting, participants, variables, data sources/measurement, bias, study size, quantitative variables, and statistical methods); Results (items 13-17, covering participants, descriptive data, outcome data, main results, and other analyses); Discussion (items 18-21, covering key results, limitations, interpretation, and generalisability); and Other Information (item 22, funding). Eighteen items use common wording across all three designs; four items carry design-specific wording, and several items are asterisked to indicate they should be reported separately for cases and controls, or for exposed and unexposed groups, depending on the design.
What it is not
STROBE is a reporting standard, not a study-design methodology guide — it tells authors what to disclose about a study that has already been designed and conducted, not how to choose between cohort, case-control, and cross-sectional designs, and it does not itself constitute peer review or a quality-assessment tool. It is also distinct from PRISMA, which governs reporting of systematic reviews and meta-analyses rather than primary observational studies.
Extensions
Several topic-specific extensions build on the base 22 items rather than replacing them, including STROBE-ME (molecular epidemiology), RECORD (studies using routinely collected health data), and STROBE-nut (nutritional epidemiology). No full renumbered revision of the base STROBE checklist has superseded the 2007 version.
References
- von Elm et al., ‘The Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) statement’ (PLoS Medicine, 2007); EQUATOR Network STROBE resources; strobe-statement.org.
Also known as
STROBE statement
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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