A systematic review and meta-analysis of survey research was conducted to estimate honorary authorship prevalence in health sciences. We searched PubMed, Lens.org, and Dimensions.ai. until January 5 2023. Methodological quality was assessed and quantitative syntheses were conducted. Nineteen surveys were included and rated as having low methodological quality. We found a pooled prevalence of 26% [95% CI 21–31] (6 surveys, 2758 respondents) of researchers that perceived co-author(s) as honorary on the publication at issue (when they were not referred to any authorship criteria). That prevalence was 18% [95% CI 15–21] (11 surveys, 4272 respondents) when researchers were referred to Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) authorship criteria, and 51% [95% CI 47–56] (15 surveys, 5111 respondents) when researchers were asked to declare their co-author(s) contributions on the publication at issue (and these were then compared to ICMJE criteria). 10% of researchers [95% CI 9–12] (11 surveys, 3,663 respondents) reported being approached by others to include honorary author(s) on the publication at issue and 16% [95% CI 13–18] (2 surveys, 823 respondents) admitted adding (an) honorary author(s). Survey research consistently indicates that honorary authorship in the health sciences is highly prevalent, however the quality of the surveys’ methods and reporting needs improvement.
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Challenges that surveys are facing are increasing data collection costs and declining budgets. During the past years, many surveys at Statistics Netherlands were redesigned to reduce costs and to increase or maintain response rates. From 2018 onwards, adaptive survey design has been applied in several social surveys to produce more accurate statistics within the same budget. In previous years, research has been done into the effect on quality and costs of reducing the use of interviewers in mixed-mode surveys starting with internet observation, followed by telephone or face-to-face observation of internet nonrespondents. Reducing follow-ups can be done in different ways. By using stratified selection of people eligible for follow-up, nonresponse bias may be reduced. The main decisions to be made are how to divide the population into strata and how to compute the allocation probabilities for face-to-face and telephone observation in the different strata. Currently, adaptive survey design is an option in redesigns of social surveys at Statistics Netherlands. In 2018 it has been implemented in the Health Survey and the Public Opinion Survey, in 2019 in the Life Style Monitor and the Leisure Omnibus, in 2021 in the Labour Force Survey, and in 2022 it is planned for the Social Coherence Survey. This paper elaborates on the development of the adaptive survey design for the Labour Force Survey. Attention is paid to the survey design, in particular the sampling design, the data collection constraints, the choice of the strata for the adaptive design, the calculation of follow-up fractions by mode of observation and stratum, the practical implementation of the adaptive design, and the six-month parallel design with corresponding response results.
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There is an upsurge in the use of mobile phones among higher education students in Ghana, which may result in the nomophobia prevalence with the students. Therefore, the need to assess the influence of nomophobia within the student population in Ghana. This descriptive cross-sectional study investigated the prevalence of nomophobia and the sociodemographic variables, and the association with academic achievement of the understudied population. A self-reporting nomophobia questionnaire, composed of 20 dimensions, was answered by 670 university students to measure the nomophobia prevalence. Raw data were estimated using descriptive statistics, and one-way ANOVA and Independent T-test. While the findings showed diverse grades of nomophobia, statistical significance between academic achievement and the level of nomophobia was observed. This study concludes that there is a high nomophobia prevalence among university students in Ghana as the use of smartphones increases. However, follow-up studies should be conducted in Ghanaian universities to monitor nomophobia and its associates in order to reduce the adverse effects of habitual use of smartphones.
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