Diagnostic accuracy of the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) for detecting major depression in pregnant and postnatal women: protocol for a systematic review and individual patient data meta-analyses is a research paper published in BMJ Open (2015). On theSindex it has a DataRank of 2.3. It has been cited 57 times, with 38 citing works in its 1-hop citation network.
IntroductionStudies of the diagnostic accuracy of depression screening tools often used data-driven methods to select optimal cut-offs. Typically, these studies report results from a small range of cut-off points around whatever cut-off score is identified as most accurate. When published data are combined in meta-analyses, estimates of accuracy for different cut-off points may be based on data from different studies, rather than data from all studies for each cut-off point. Thus, traditional meta-analyses may exaggerate accuracy estimates. Individual patient data (IPD) meta-analyses synthesise data from all studies for each cut-off score to obtain accuracy estimates. The 10-item Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) is commonly recommended for depression screening in the perinatal period. The primary objective of this IPD meta-analysis is to determine the diagnostic accuracy of the EPDS to detect major depression among women during pregnancy and in the postpartum period across all potentially relevant cut-off scores, accounting for patient factors that may influence accuracy (age, pregnancy vs postpartum).Methods and analysisData sources will include Medline, Medline In-Process & Other Non-Indexed Citations, PsycINFO, and Web of Science. Studies that include a diagnosis of major depression based on a validated structured or semistructured clinical interview administered within 2 weeks of (before or after) the administration of the EPDS will be included. Risk of bias will be assessed with the Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies-2 tool. Bivariate random-effects meta-analysis will be conducted for the full range of plausible cut-off values. Analyses will evaluate data from pregnancy and the postpartum period separately, as well as combining data from all women in a single model.Ethics and disseminationThis study does not require ethics approval. Dissemination will include journal articles and presentations to policymakers, healthcare providers and researchers.Systematic review registrationPROSPERO 2015:CRD42015024785.
FAIR checklist signals are shown for context only and do not affect DataRank scoring.
Base Score Contribution
0.609
From this paper's citation signal
Citation Network Contribution
1.7
From 34 citing papers with measurable signal
Ranked by citation count — the same ordering the engine uses when summing log1p(Cq) over citers.
DataRank blends this paper's own citation count with the influence of the papers that cite it. Here, roughly 26% comes from its base citations and 74% from the citation network (34 citing papers contributed measurable signal).
Citers are pulled from OpenAlex sorted by cited_by_count:descand capped per paper, so when the cap binds we keep the highest-signal references and the score is reproducible across reruns.
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