Credibility of subgroup analyses by socioeconomic status in public health intervention evaluations: An underappreciated problem?

摘要: There is increasing interest amongst researchers and policy makers in identifying the effect of public health interventions on inequalities by socioeconomic status (SES). This issue typically addressed evaluation studies through subgroup analyses, where test whether an intervention differs according to participants. The credibility such analyses therefore crucial when making judgements about how likely affect inequalities, although this appears be rarely considered within health. aim study was assess published evaluations interventions. An established set 10 criteria for applied a purposively sampled 21 studies, majority which focussed healthy eating interventions, reported differential effects SES. While these were found otherwise relatively high quality methodologically, only 8 met at least 6 analysis. These findings suggest that conducted interventions' impact may underappreciated problem.