Gold Standard? The Use of Randomized Controlled Trials for International Educational PolicyPoor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo. New York: PublicAffairs, 2011. 303 pp. $26.99.Making Schools Work: New Evidence on Accountability Reforms by Barbara Bruns, Deon Filmer, and Harry A. Patrinos. Human Development Perspectives. Washington, DC: World Bank, 2011. 268 pp. $35.00.More Than Good Intentions: How a New Economics Is Helping to Solve Global Poverty by Dean Karlan and Jacob Appel. New York: Dutton, 2011. 308 pp. $26.95.

2014 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 166-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan M. Castillo ◽  
Daniel A. Wagner
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Randomized Controlled Trials ◽  
Human Development ◽  
World Bank ◽  
Gold Standard ◽  
Controlled Trials ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
Global Poverty ◽  
Randomized Controlled ◽  
New Evidence

Making a Difference

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rani Lill Anjum ◽  
Stephen Mumford
Keyword(s):  
Randomized Controlled Trials ◽  
Comparative Studies ◽  
Gold Standard ◽  
Controlled Trials ◽  
Positive Difference ◽  
Randomized Controlled ◽  
Difference Making ◽  
Making A Difference ◽  
Difference Makers ◽  
Trial Intervention

One view of what links a cause to an effect is that causes make a difference to whether or not the effect is produced. This assumption is behind comparative studies, such as the method of randomized controlled trials, aimed at showing whether a trial intervention makes a positive difference to outcomes. Comparative studies are regarded as the gold standard in some areas of research but they are also problematic. There can be causes that make no difference and some difference-makers that are not causes. This indicates that difference-making should be taken as a symptom of causation: a feature that accompanies it in some, though not all, cases. Symptoms can be useful in the discovery of causes but they cannot be definitive of causation.

Trends in randomized controlled trials in ENT: a 30-year review

1997 ◽  
Vol 111 (7) ◽  
pp. 611-613 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. W. Ah-See ◽  
N. C. Molony ◽  
A. G. D. Maran
Keyword(s):  
Clinical Trials ◽  
Clinical Practice ◽  
Randomized Controlled Trials ◽  
Gold Standard ◽  
Controlled Trials ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Controlled Clinical Trials ◽  
Medline Search ◽  
Randomized Controlled Clinical Trials ◽  
Randomized Controlled

AbstractThere is a growth in the demand for clinical practice to be evidence based. Recent years have seen a rise in the number of randomized controlled clinical trials (RCTS). Such trials while acknowledged as the gold standard for evidence can be difficult to perform in surgical specialities. We have recently identified a low proportion of RCTS in the otolaryngology literature. Our aim was to identify any trend in the number of published RCTS within the ENT literature over a 30-year period and to identify which areas of our speciality lend themselves to this form of study design. A Medline search of 10 prominent journals published between 1966 and 1995 was performed. Two hundred and ninety-six RCTS were identified. Only five were published before 1980. Two hundred (71 per cent) of RCTS were in the areas of otology and rhinology. An encouraging trend is seen in RCTS within ENT literature.

scholarly journals Critical analysis of the drafting of physical therapy randomized controlled trials published in Portuguese

2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 421-427
Author(s):  
Ercole da Cruz Rubini ◽  
Fabio Dutra Pereira ◽  
Renato Sobral Monteiro-Junior ◽  
Patricia Zaidan ◽  
Cintia Pereira de Souza ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Physical Therapy ◽  
Randomized Controlled Trials ◽  
Gold Standard ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Physical Therapists ◽  
Controlled Trials ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Randomized Controlled ◽  
Methodological Procedures

Abstract Introduction: randomized controlled trials are high quality studies. Many problems related to the drafting of these studies have been identified and consequently various national and international journals, in an attempt to improve this writing, have adopted the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials recommendations. Regarding the studies written specifically by physical therapists, until now, the quality of the drafting in Portuguese has been unknown. Aim: To critically analyze the drafting of RCTs in the area of physical therapy, published in Portuguese, in relation to the CONSORT recommendations. Materials and Methods: On 17th Oct, 2012, 548 RCTs in Portuguese were recovered from the MEDLINE and PEDro databases, which were divided among four evaluators who, after reading the abstracts, selected those related to physical therapy. Of these studies, 78 RCTs were related to physical therapy, which were divided among the four evaluators for the analysis of the drafting according to the CONSORT recommendations. The four evaluators who participated in this study previously obtained a median kappa above 70% when their analyses were compared to the analyses of the evaluator considered the gold standard due to having greater experience. Results: The quantity of items of the CONSORT recommendations according to year of publication was very small, corresponding to a mean of 43% of the items in the articles analyzed. Conclusion: The results make very clear the need to improve the quality of the drafting of the RCTs related to physical therapy in Portuguese and to include more rigorous methodological procedures, such as sample size, randomization and blinding. The dissemination and adoption of the CONSORT recommendations by physical therapy researchers would, without doubt, be a big step towards improving this quality.

scholarly journals External Validity and Worksite Wellness: Lessons From China and Illinois

2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-12
Author(s):  
Paul E. Terry
Keyword(s):  
Best Practices ◽  
Randomized Controlled Trials ◽  
External Validity ◽  
Careful Consideration ◽  
Controlled Trials ◽  
Worksite Wellness ◽  
Randomized Controlled ◽  
Negative Findings ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Internal And External Validity

This editorial describes recent randomized controlled trials of worksite wellness interventions and argues that fidelity to intervention designs should be contingent on careful consideration of internal and external validity. A China based hypertension management study which achieved impressive outcomes across 60 workplaces using a comprehensive approach is contrasted with the traditional wellness practices employed in other randomized controlled trials conducted in America. Why studies with negative findings receive more media and professional scrutiny than studies with positive findings is discussed. Three reasons are posited for why bad is stronger than good when it comes to capturing attention. Adoption of new evidence is discussed along with what health promotion professionals can do to advance best practices by considering adoption as an ongoing process.

scholarly journals An update around the evidence base for the lower extremity ultrasound regional block technique

F1000Research ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Fanelli ◽  
Daniela Ghisi ◽  
Rita Maria Melotti
Keyword(s):  
Lower Extremity ◽  
Randomized Controlled Trials ◽  
Regional Anesthesia ◽  
Current Literature ◽  
Gold Standard ◽  
Ultrasound Guidance ◽  
Evidence Base ◽  
Controlled Trials ◽  
Modest Improvement ◽  
Randomized Controlled

Ultrasound guidance currently represents the gold standard for regional anesthesia. In particular for lower extremity blocks, despite the heterogeneity and the lack of large randomized controlled trials, current literature shows a modest improvement in block onset and quality compared with other localization techniques. This review aims to present the most recent findings on the application of ultrasound guidance for each single lower extremity approach.

scholarly journals Which are the most sensitive search filters to identify randomized controlled trials in MEDLINE?

2020 ◽  
Vol 108 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie Glanville ◽  
Eleanor Kotas ◽  
Robin Featherstone ◽  
Gordon Dooley
Keyword(s):  
Randomized Controlled Trials ◽  
Gold Standard ◽  
High Sensitivity ◽  
Controlled Trials ◽  
Relative Precision ◽  
Randomized Controlled ◽  
Ovid Medline ◽  
Search Filters ◽  
Standard Set ◽  
Central Database

Objective: The Cochrane Handbook of Systematic Reviews contains search filters to find randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in Ovid MEDLINE: one maximizing sensitivity and another balancing sensitivity and precision. These filters were originally published in 1994 and were adapted and updated in 2008. To determine the performance of these filters, the authors tested them and thirty-six other MEDLINE filters against a large new gold standard set of relevant records.Methods: We identified a gold standard set of RCT reports published in 2016 from the Cochrane CENTRAL database of controlled clinical trials. We retrieved the records in Ovid MEDLINE and combined these with each RCT filter. We calculated their sensitivity, relative precision, and f-scores.Results: The gold standard comprised 27,617 records. MEDLINE searches were run on July 16, 2019. The most sensitive RCT filter was Duggan et al. (sensitivity=0.99). The Cochrane sensitivity-maximizing RCT filter had a sensitivity of 0.96 but was more precise than Duggan et al. (0.14 compared to 0.04 for Duggan). The most precise RCT filters had 0.97 relative precision and 0.83 sensitivity.Conclusions: The Cochrane Ovid MEDLINE sensitivity-maximizing RCT filter can continue to be used by Cochrane reviewers and to populate CENTRAL, as it has very high sensitivity and a slightly better precision relative to more sensitive filters. The results of this study, which used a very large gold standard to compare the performance of all known RCT filters, allows searchers to make better informed decisions about which filters to use for their work.

scholarly journals Comments on “Reporting quality of randomized controlled trial abstracts in the seven highest-ranking anesthesiology journals”

Trials ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rohan Kumar Ochani ◽  
Asim Shaikh ◽  
Naser Yamani
Keyword(s):  
Randomized Controlled Trial ◽  
Randomized Controlled Trials ◽  
Gold Standard ◽  
Controlled Trial ◽  
Reporting Quality ◽  
Controlled Trials ◽  
Treatment Regimens ◽  
Randomized Controlled ◽  
Accurate Reporting

AbstractRandomized controlled trials are considered the gold standard in assessing treatment regimens, and since abstracts may be the only part of a paper that a physician reads, accurate reporting of data in abstracts is essential. The CONSORT checklist for abstracts was designed to standardize data reporting; however, for papers submitted to anesthesiology journals, the level of adherence to the CONSORT checklist for abstracts is unknown. Therefore, we commend Janackovic and Puljak for their efforts in determining the adherence of reports of trials in the highest-impact anesthesiology journals between 2014 and 2016. The results of their study are extremely important; however, we believe that that study had some methodological limitations, which we discuss in this manuscript.

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