Cochrane

Protocol: The aim of this qualitative evidence synthesis is to explore the perceptions and experiences of potential and actual participants and trial recruiters to improve understanding of how interventions, strategies and processes of recruitment to RCTs potentially work for specific groups across different settings and contexts. The specific ...

Results from clinical studies on drugs and medical devices affect how doctors practice medicine and thereby the treatments offered to patients. However, clinical research is increasingly sponsored by companies that make these products, either because the companies directly perform the studies, or fully or partially fund them. Previous research has found ...

Protocol: To assess the effects of 'Summary of findings' tables on communicating key findings of systematic reviews of the effects of healthcare interventions. This will be achieved by: assessing the effects of 'Summary of findings' tables versus full versions of systematic reviews on communicating key findings of systematic reviews of the ...

Meta-analysis is a statistical technique to combine results from separate research studies. A meta-analysis can be performed using summary data published in a study report, referred to as aggregate data (AD), or using data collected on each individual participant in the study, referred to as individual participant data (IPD). A meta-analysis of individual ...

Doctors and patients need to be able to trust reports of medical research because these are used to help them make decisions about treatments. It is therefore important to prevent false or misleading research. Problems with research include various types of misconduct such as altering results (falsification), making up results (fabrication) or copying ...

It is widely recommended that multicentre randomised controlled trials (RCTs) should have a central process for assessing whether or not a patient has had an event, rather than relying solely on the outcomes reported by assessors at the relevant site where the decision might be subjective. These Adjudication Committees (ACs) are commonly used, especially ...

Introduction Most trials fail to recruit the number of participants they need within the time they had planned to conduct the study. Recruiting potential participants to research studies involves three stages: identifying, approaching and obtaining the consent of potential participants to join a study. Researchers often rely on healthcare staff, such ...

Background Survey questionnaires are important tools in public health and clinical research as they offer a convenient way of collecting data from a large number of respondents, dealing with sensitive topics, and are less resource intensive than other data collection techniques. The delivery of survey questionnaires via apps running on smartphones ...

A systematic review summarises evidence from multiple studies to answer a specific research question (e.g. what are the benefits and harms of a particular intervention for a particular health condition?). Often, there are many outcomes that systematic review authors could report to address their research question (e.g. pain, disability and quality of ...

Researchers and organizations often use evidence from randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to determine the efficacy of a treatment or intervention under ideal conditions, while studies of observational designs are used to measure the effectiveness of an intervention in non-experimental, 'real world' scenarios. Sometimes, the results of RCTs and observational ...