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The need for randomised controlled trials (RCTs) to support evidence‐based services to improve outcomes for children is increasingly recognised by researchers and policy‐makers. However, this brings a pressing requirement to build research capacity for conducting RCTs and to address the concerns of practitioners who may be suspicious about the method. This article reviews a variety of texts on the subject, ranging from analyses of the historical and political context of RCTs, to concise introductions of the key methodological and practical issues, to more in‐depth discussions of complex designs and statistics. The article seeks to help readers navigate these resources by focusing on seven questions that seem particularly salient for those considering whether and how to commission, undertake, participate in or use results from RCTs.

The article's purpose is to critique a paper (Stewart‐Brown et al., 2011) in a previous issue of the Journal of Children's Services, which challenges the utility of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) to evaluate the effectiveness of preventive interventions for children.

The article is a critical reflection on the primary issue discussed by Stewart‐Brown et al. namely that RCTs do not work well in the evaluation of complex social interventions.

The author finds fault with several of the claims made in the earlier essay and concludes that RCTs remain the most credible research methodology for estimating programme impacts. It is certainly true that RCTs do not tell us everything about programmes and implementation. However, if researchers are attempting to assess whether social interventions have the intended measured impact on their participants, then RCTs do indeed represent the “gold standard” research design.

The article is a re‐assertion of the value of RCTs in research on preventive interventions in children's services.

The purpose of this article is to provide several viewpoints about monitoring aspects related to recent deployments of a new technology (IPv6).

Several views and domains were used, with a common point: the Portuguese research and education network (RCTS).

A significant amount of work is yet to be done, in order to mature the deployment of this new internet technology.

The equipment whence the data were collected still has some limitations regarding the new technology. Future datasets may benefit from wider deployments.

The work also demonstrates that IPv6 deployment is in its early stages, which is negative, given the projected dates for IPv4 exhaustion.

The findings and the work described will be useful for people trying to deploy IPv6 networks in the short or medium timeframe.

The paper's purpose is to participate in a debate about the role of randomised controlled trials in evaluation of preventive interventions for children.

The paper is a response to critiques on Stewart‐Brown et al. published in the Journal of Children's Services, Vol. 6 No. 4, pp. 228–35.

Randomised controlled trials are likely to be at their best in the evaluation of interventions that do not require the active engagement and personal development of participants. The latter may depend on a series of interventions and events that potentiate each other over time. Randomised controlled trials are likely to be least valuable in evaluating universal level interventions that aim to change population norms. Because of the challenges involved in conducting RCTs in this setting they cannot be relied upon to give accurate estimates of programme effect and therefore do not deserve the privileged position that has been accorded them in the hierarchy of evidence.

This paper develops the argument that the privileged position of RCTs in the evidence hierarchy of preventive services for children is undeserved.

Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) are considered the bedrock of evidence‐based practice. However, they raise important issues about participant recruitment and the ethics of group allocation. In this article we report relevant literature on how participants with learning disabilities and other stakeholders experience RCTs. Five quantitative studies have been published, one reporting on the views of people with learning disabilities and the remainder on carers' views. Despite the methodological limitations of the studies, carers appear to have a positive experience of RCT participation, and people with learning disabilities are able to understand certain aspects of research methods. We conclude that stakeholders are not hostile to RCTs, but the therapeutic misconception may affect their experiences. Further research is required to investigate interventions that might help promote RCTs in learning disabilities.

This paper's aim is to explore the uses and limitations of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) for evaluating complex interventions, with a particular focus on sample recruitment and retention issues.

This is an invited critique of a previous paper.

RCTs have many limitations. It is particularly important to consider issues relating to the sample they recruit and retain. Nonetheless, they remain a uniquely powerful way to exclude other potential explanations for outcomes and therefore provide robust evidence for the effectiveness of specific interventions.

It is hoped that vigorous debate may contribute to a deepened understanding of the nature, limitations and potential contribution of RCTs to understanding the impact of different ways of helping people.

Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) have been offered a privileged position in terms of the evidence base for preventive interventions for children, but practical and theoretical issues challenge this research methodology. This paper aims to address this issue.

This paper analyses practical and methodological issues of using RCTs within children's preventive services and presents the results of a qualitative study using data collected from parents who were asked to take part in an RCT of a preventive intervention.

Well recognised issues include the impossibility of blinding participants, the problem of identifying a pre‐eminent outcome measure for complex interventions, and problems with limiting access to equivalent interventions in real world settings. A further theoretical problem is the exclusion from RCTs of families who are most ready to change, resulting in a reduced level of intervention effectiveness. Qualitative evidence from one recent RCT suggests that this problem could be operating in some prevention trials. Increasing sample sizes can overcome some of these problems, but the cost of the necessarily huge trials becomes disproportionate to the intervention?

Given the limitations on RCTs in preventive settings, the paper argues their privileged position in terms of research evidence maybe undeserved.

Clinical evidence has suggested that alpha-lipoic acid (ALA), a potent antioxidant, seems to have some effects on inflammatory process. However, these results are equivocal. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the nature of association between ALA and serum C-reactive protein (CRP) level by pooling the results from clinical trial studies.

Relevant studies were identified by systematic literature search of PubMed/MEDLINE, Scopus, Web of Sciences and Cochrane library up to September 2016 for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) evaluating the impact of ALA supplementation on CRP. The pooled data were summarized as weighted mean difference (WMD) and 95 per cent confidence interval (CI). Effect sizes of eligible studies were pooled using random- or fixed-effects (the DerSimonian–Laird estimator) depending on the results of heterogeneity tests.

Of 212 papers, 15 were eligible RCTs according to inclusion criteria. The selected studies comprised 1,408 cases and 457 controls. The dose of ALA supplement ranged from 300 to 1,200 mg, and the duration of follow-up was from 1 to 48 weeks. ALA supplementation significantly reduced the levels of circulating CRP (WMD: −0.088, 95 per cent CI: −0.131, −0.045, p < 0.001) with significant heterogeneity (I² = 73.4 per cent, p < 0.001). Populations with age younger than 50 years (PMD: −0.060 mg/dl), receiving doses less than 600 mg/day (PMD: −0.057 mg/dl), having cardiovascular disease (PMD: −0.105 mg/dl), hemodialysis (PMD: −0.209 mg/dl), diabetes (PMD: −0.021 mg/dl) and otherwise healthy subjects (PMD: −0.045 mg/dl) were sources of heterogeneity.

This meta-analysis of RCTs suggests that ALA supplementation seems to significantly reduce circulating CRP level.

The purpose of this paper with meta-analysis is to clarify the effects of cranberry consumption on features of the metabolic syndrome of interest of all relevant randomized controlled trials (RCTs).

A systematic literature search was conducted on ISI web of science, PubMed, Embase, the Cochrane library and Google Scholar databases, to include trials published up to March 2019. Weighted mean differences (WMD) were calculated from a random or fixed-effects models. Between‐study heterogeneity was assessed by Cochrane’s test and I2 index.

Ten RCTs were included in this review which involving a total of 371 subjects. Our meta-analysis showed that cranberry consumption had beneficial effects on waist circumference (WMD −0.49, 95% CI −0.96 to −0.036; p = 0.034). No significant effect of cranberry consumption on fasting blood glucose, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, triglycerides and blood pressure was found in this meta-analysis.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first systematic review with meta-analysis of RCTs that investigate the effect of cranberry consumption on features of the metabolic syndrome.

The aim of this article is to clarify for users the differences between the information resources Cochrane Library (online version), SUMSearch, TRIP (Turning Research into Practice) and UpToDate (online version), and to understand fully to what extent these four resources can answer therapeutic PICO (Patient/Population‐Intervention/Exposure‐Comparison‐Outcome) questions. We chose ten therapeutic PICO questions from the text “PDQ Evidence‐Based Principles and Practice” and from some evidence‐based medicine (EBM) related Web sites. We then looked for systematic reviews of randomized controlled trials (RCTs), RCTs, practice guidelines or reviews for them on the four electronic resources, respectively. All the resources are completely appropriate to answer therapeutic questions.