About
TrAnsparent ReportinG of studies Emulating a Target Trial (TARGET)
The guideline was developed to support authors of observational studies aiming to emulate a target trial report their studies clearly and transparently. Use of the TARGET guideline should help readers, reviewers and journal editors evaluate studies emulating a target trial.
The TARGET statement document will describe the processes used to develop guideline and provides a minimum but essential checklist of items to report in target trial emulation studies.
The TARGET Checklist is being piloted with potential users of the guideline until the end of 2024, to take part in this piloting, provide your contact details here.
The Explanation and Elaboration document, will provide in-depth information on each item of the checklist to assist users of the TARGET guideline. The checklist is best used in consultation with the explanation and elaboration document.
The Checklist
The TARGET checklist contains the minimum information recommended to be reported in a manuscript of a study emulating a target trial.
The TARGET checklist, when available will be able to be accessed via the links below.
[Link to fillable checklist pdf]
[Link to fillable checklist word]
The guideline documents will be able to cited as:
[Statement citation]
[E&E citation]
Resources & Templates
TARGET Publications
- Statement (tbc)
- Explanation and Elaboration (tbc)
- Systematic Review
- Protocol
Templates (tbc)
- Protocol tables
- Target trial and emulation
- With index trial (for benchmarking)
- Participant flowcharts
- Regular parallel group
- Clone-censor-weight
- Sequential trial emulation
Share This Page
Follow Us For Updates
@TARGETGuideline on X
For More information on how to Conduct a TARGET Trial Emulation
See Causal Inference: What If
or consider attending the CAUSALab Annual Summer Course on target trial emulation
Members of the TARGET Team
The TARGET guideline team includes epidemiologists, clinician-researchers, clinicians, statisticians, methodologists, industry-based researchers, psychologists, journal editors, science communicators and funders.
Aidan Cashin
School of Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of New South Wales (Australia)
Centre for Pain IMPACT, Neuroscience Research Australia (Australia)
Issa Dahabreh
CAUSALab, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA (USA)
Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA (USA)
Department of Biostatistics, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA (USA)
Barbra Dickerman
CAUSALab, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA (USA)
Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA (USA)
Matthias Egger
Institute for Social and Preventive Medicine, University of Bern (Switzerland)
Population Health Sciences, Bristol Medical School, University of Bristol (UK)
Centre for Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Research, University of Cape Town (South Africa)
Xabier Garcia-Albeniz
Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA (USA)
RTI Health Solutions, Barcelona (Spain)
Robert Golub
Department of Medicine, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL (USA)
Harrison Hansford
School of Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of New South Wales (Australia)
Centre for Pain IMPACT, Neuroscience Research Australia (Australia)
Miguel Hernán
CAUSALab, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA (USA)
Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA (USA)
Department of Biostatistics, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA (USA)
Nazrul Islam
Oxford Population Health, Big Data Institute, University of Oxford, Oxford (UK)
Faculty of Medicine, University of Southampton, Southampton (UK)
Matthew Jones
School of Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of New South Wales (Australia)
Centre for Pain IMPACT, Neuroscience Research Australia (Australia)
Hopin Lee
University of Exeter Medical School, Exeter (UK)
IQVIA, London (UK)
Sara Lodi
CAUSALab, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA (USA)
Department of Biostatistics, Boston University School of Public Health, Boston, MA (USA)
James McAuley
School of Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of New South Wales (Australia)
Centre for Pain IMPACT, Neuroscience Research Australia (Australia)
Margarita Moreno-Betancur
Clinical Epidemiology & Biostatistics Unit, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne, VIC (Australia)
Department of Paediatrics, The University of Melbourne, Parkville (Australia)
Sallie-Anne Pearson
School of Population Health, Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of New South Wales (Australia)
Sebastian Schneeweiss
Division of Pharmacoepidemiology, Department of Medicine, Brigham & Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA (USA)
Melissa Sharp
Department of Health Psychology, School of Population Health, RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences, Dublin (Ireland)
Jonathan Sterne
Department of Population Health Sciences, Bristol Medical School, University of Bristol (UK)
NIHR Bristol Biomedical Research Centre (UK)
Health Data Research UK South-West, Bristol (UK)
Elizabeth Stuart
Department of Mental Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD (USA)
Sonja Swanson
Department of Epidemiology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh (USA)
CAUSALab, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA (USA)
Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA (USA)