Lecture #16 - RCT Example

Question 1

What does the question you’re trying to answer need to be?

Answer 1

Meaningful and accurately describe what you gonna do

Question 2

What are three bullet points for RCT

Answer 2

1. Intervention
2. Effectiveness - causal relationship
3. Comparison between intervention groups and control groups

Question 3

What is the 2 x 2 factorial design efficient for?

Answer 3

Evaluating more than one intervention (compare between ExT and MT)

Could use all the participants in the study

Question 4

Why publish protocol?

Answer 4

1. Avoid publishing bias bc even if don’t get good results, you’d still need to publish
2. Prevents duplication of RCT (they are very resource intensive)

Question 5

What’s the main purpose of having such a tight exclusion criteria?

Answer 5

Safety reasons - don’t want real unfit patients to do the exercise and then get unwell

Question 6

What do you avoid if you do randomisation? What kind of bias?

Answer 6

Selection bias

Question 7

Randomisation:

1. Equal chance of being….
2. Equal distribution of?
3. Same proportion of?

Any difference in outcomes will due to…

Answer 7

1. In particular arm - it’s unpredictable
2. Patient characteristics
3. Confounders in each group

Will be due to intervention

Question 8

What is the Table 1 thing and what’s it used for?

Answer 8

Baseline characteristics

See if they’re the same and if yes, randomisation worked.

Question 9

Blinding to limit bias:

1. Assessors - what were some of the ways they attempted to stay blinded?
2. What about the participants?
3. What about the physiotherapists?

Answer 9

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Question 10

What’re possible solutions to bias? (2)

Answer 10

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Question 11

What strategies did they use to maintain retention?

Answer 11

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Question 12

Go read about adherence

Answer 12

☺️🙌🏼

Question 13

Have a read of the advantages and disadvantages of the trail

Answer 13

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