- 12 You Want To Conduct A Clinical Trial To Compare The Effect Of The Routine Use Of A Screening Test For Depression On 1 (118.36 KiB) Viewed 111 times
12) You want to conduct a clinical trial to compare the effect of the routine use of a screening test for depression on measures of patient satisfaction and quality of life. The patients involved would be patients in any of six general medicine continuity clinics (with separate attendings and residents). To avoid a cumbersome randomization procedure your colleague argues for selecting patients by whether their birthdate is at the beginning of the month (1- 15) or the end of the month (16-31). a) Describe any important methodologic problem(s) with this randomization scheme and the most likely direction of any resulting bias. (For the purpose of this question, ignore any problems of contamination resulting from randomization within the same clinic.) b) You propose an alternative randomization scheme. Write a paragraph describing how you would randomize patients in this trial, including how you would handle center effect. You must use the CONSORT criteria (i.e., 8, 9, and 10) in writing your description. Consider stratification for 1 or more important effect moderators.