Reporting of Health Promotion Research: Addressing the Quality Gaps in Iran

Quality of health behavior research determines usefulness of the findings for application.The authors individually scrutinized quality of a representative sample of abstracts (n=315)submitted to the 1st International and 4th National Congress on Health Education and Promotion,held in Tabriz, Iran on 16-19 May, 2011. Among the assessed abstracts, introductionsection had the standard format in 18.1% (CI: 14.2-22.7%), sampling method and samplesize were concurrently explained in 56.3% (CI: 50.3-62.1%), and the data in 40.6% (CI:35.4-46.1%) were insufficient to support the conclusion section. The observed heterogeneityin the quality of Iranian research may reflect gaps in research methodology education.Revision in the current research performance is recommended to ensure a more stringentnational research output.