Institute:Office of National Coordinator (ONC) Workforce Training Curriculum
Component:The Culture of Health Care
Unit:Evidence-Based Practice
Lecture:Phrasing the clinical question
Interventions
Slide content:Questions to Ask about a Study on Intervention Continued Are the results valid? Did experimental and control groups retain a similar prognosis after the study started? Were patients aware of group allocation? Were clinicians aware of group allocation? Were assessors aware of group allocation? Was follow-up complete? 10
Slide notes:10 There are more questions to ask about the validity of the results. In particular, did the experimental control groups retain a similar prognosis after the study started? Were the participants aware of what group they were allocated to? Did the clinicians or the assessors (the people judging the output of the study) know which participants were assigned to which group? In some studies, the participants know what group they are in. And in a study of, for example, a particular surgery, the clinicians obviously know which participants are in which group. But we want to make sure that the randomization process works and that the assessors, to the best extent possible, are not aware of the group allocation. We also need to know that the follow-up was complete, that a large proportion of patients were not lost to follow-up.