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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Claire Johnson, MSEd, DC, Southern California University of Health Sciences and National Univerisity of Health Sciences, 711 Mission Ave #336, Oceanside, CA 92054, 858 208-8778, johnsondc@aol.com and Bart Green, MSEd, DC, BMC MCAS Miramar, Naval Medical Center San Diego, Bldg 2496 Bauer Rd, San Diego, CA 92145.

The aim of this study is to review the quality of the 2000 Association of Chiropractic Colleges Educational Conference peer review committee's analysis of a mock paper. Specifically, we desired to identify what decision the review committee would make on a fictitious study that contained planned errors, and to identify if reviewers with more publication and review experience would better identify errors and rate the paper with lower marks than those with less experience.

In 1999, a call for peer reviewers resulted in 96 people who submitted applications to participate as members of the peer review committee. In addition to the regularly assigned papers, a fictitious study was created and included in each of the peer reviewer's packets. Reviewers were informed that they may review proposals outside of the areas of expertise that they designated on their peer reviewer form and that their reviewer ratings and comments would be compared for each proposal that they reviewed. The fictitious study contained intentionally placed errors similar to those found in previous submissions to the ACC conference and errors found in other biomedical journals. Of the 96 reviewers, 82 completed and returned their reviews. Each of the reviewer's comments, ratings, and rankings in addition to their publication/review experience were entered into a spread sheet. The quality of the reviews of the fictitious study are compared to the scores of the 2000 submissions. The reviewers' experience and background is compared to their ability to correctly identify errors and if they rejected the fictitious study.

Learning Objectives: