Objective： The reporting of patient-reported outcomes （PRO） instrument development is vital for both researchers and clinicians to determine its validity, thus, we propose the Preferred Reporting Items for PRO Instrument Development （PRIPROID） to improve the quality of reports. Methods： Abiding by the guidance published by the Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of health Research （EQUATOR） Network, we had performed 6 steps for items development： identified the need for a guideline, performed a literature review, obtained funding for the guideline initiative, identified participants, conducted a Delphi exercise and generated a list of PRIPROID items for consideration at the face-to-face meeting. Results： Twenty three items subheadings under 7 topics were included： title and structured abstract, rationale, objectives, intention, eligibility criteria, conceptual framework, items generation, response options, scoring, times, administrative modes,burden assessment, properties assessment, statistical methods, participants, main results, and additional analysis, summary of evidence, limitations, clinical attentions, and conclusions, item pools or final form, and funding. Conclusions： The PRIPROID contains many elements of the PRO research, and this assists researchers to report their results more accurately and to a certain degree use this instrument to evaluate the quality of the research methods.
OBJECTIVE： To evaluate the application of health assessment instruments in Chinese medicine. METHODS： According to a pre-defined search strategy, a comprehensive literature search for all articles published in China National Knowledge Infrastructure databases was conducted. The resulting articles that met the defined inclusion and exclusion criteria were used for analysis. RESULTS： A total of 97 instruments for health outcome assessment in Chinese medicine have been used in fundamental and theoretical research, and 14 of these were also used in 29 clinical trials that were randomized controlled trials, or descriptive or cross-sectional studies. In 2 152 Chinese medicine-based studies that used instruments in their methodology, more than 150 questionnaires were identified. Among the identified questionnaires, 51 were used in more than 10 articles （0.5%）. Most of these instruments were developed in Western countries and few studies （4%） used the instrument as the primary evidence for their conclusions. CONCLUSION： Usage of instruments for health outcome assessment in Chinese medicine is increasing rapidly; however, current limitations include selection rationale, result interpretation and standardization, which must be addressed accordingly.
