Association of Depression/Anxiety Symptoms with Neck Pain: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Literature in China

Table 2

Methodological quality of the case-control studies (N = 12).

Question	Answer
	Yes	No	Unclear
	N	N	N
Cases
Was the clinical setting used for recruitment made clear?	10	1	1
Was the denominator from which cases were recruited described?	8	1	3
Was duration of illness adequately described?	4	8	0
Was adequate information given on the total number of patients approached?	3	9	0
Was information given on participants and nonparticipants?	2	10	0
Was information given on the differences between participants and refusers?	0	12	0
Were the inclusion and exclusion criteria described well enough to be replicable?	10	2	0
Controls
Did the study use controls who were students/employees of the research institution?	0	11	1
Were controls selected from an explicit sampling frame?	9	2	1
Did the study recruit through advertisements?	0	11	1
Were similar exclusion criteria applied for controls as for cases?	4	0	8
Was information given on number of controls approached?	6	6	0
Was adequate information given on differences between controls refusing and agreeing?	0	12	0
Information bias
Were the investigators who rated the exposure masked to participants’ status?	9	3	0

“no” is the answer indicative of good methodological practice.