The influence of physical activity during pregnancy on maternal, fetal or infant heart rate variability: a systematic review

Table 6 Quality assessment of the included articles according to the EPHPP tool

First author, year	Representativeness	Design	Confounders	Blinding^b	Methods	Drop-outs	Global rating^a
May, [47]	Weak	Moderate	Strong	NA	Strong	Weak	Weak
Van Leeuwen, [41]	Weak	Moderate	Weak	NA	Strong	Weak	Weak
May, Suminski, [37]	Weak	Moderate	Strong	NA	Strong	Weak	Weak
May, Scholtz, [39]	Weak	Moderate	Strong	NA	Strong	Strong	Moderate
Gustafson, [42]	Weak	Moderate	Weak	NA	Strong	Weak	Weak
May, [38]	Weak	Moderate	Strong	NA	Strong	Strong	Moderate
Stutzman [43]	Moderate	Strong	Strong	NA	Strong	Strong	Strong
May, [40]	Weak	Moderate	Weak	NA	Strong	Weak	Weak
Satyapriya [36]	Moderate	Strong	Strong	NA	Moderate	Moderate	Strong

(EPHPP Effective Public Health Practice Project, NA not applicable)
^aStrong, no weak component rating; moderate, one weak component rating; weak, two or more weak component ratings
^bThe component ‘blinding of outcome assessors and participants’ has been considered not applicable for observational and interventional studies. The reason for considering blinding not applicable for intervention studies in this case is that in studies with physical activity intervention the assessors (i.e. researchers) and the participants are very likely to know the outcome of the randomization [51]

ISSN: 1471-2393