Research on research: Studies of clinical-trial participants
Aug 29, 2018 8:56:08 GMT -5
brat likes this
Post by psystat on Aug 29, 2018 8:56:08 GMT -5
Howdy! This is my first post on JALR's boards, as an almost newbie -- have been trying to get into a second trial since completing one earlier this summer.
While investigating pros and cons of lab-ratting I looked for peer-reviewed research on clinical-trial participants. Some of you probably know that literature better than I do. For anyone interested but not aware of it, here's a fairly recent, non-technical example that's OA, mainly about ways healthy volunteers try to maximize their participation -- including ignoring washout periods:
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4408988/
It was pretty interesting, but I didn't read it carefully enough to judge how solid its odology was.* Two things I wondered about, maybe because I missed where the authors addressed them:
1. How confident are they that their participants were reporting all their activity accurately?
2. How did they determine washout periods (e.g., from previous trial's last dose, check out, or last event to next trial's screening, check in, or dose)?
BTW, if I have time/motivation and detect interest on this board, I might compile a bibliography on research like that, about clinical-trial participants. Not sure what its scope would be (e.g., only Phase 1 drug trials or broader), but finding several studies should be fairly easy by using various standard lit-search strategies, maybe starting with the above study's "citation network" (i.e., cited and citing studies) and doing the same with its second author's fairly extensive work on this topic:
www.jillfisher.net/copy-of-papers-on-clinical-trials
*As a statistician and research odologist, I tend to pay more attention to research quality than the average person; not all studies are created equal! My experience with qualitative research is minimal, though, so studies like this are tough to critically appraise -- might check the EQUATOR Network for guidance.
While investigating pros and cons of lab-ratting I looked for peer-reviewed research on clinical-trial participants. Some of you probably know that literature better than I do. For anyone interested but not aware of it, here's a fairly recent, non-technical example that's OA, mainly about ways healthy volunteers try to maximize their participation -- including ignoring washout periods:
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4408988/
It was pretty interesting, but I didn't read it carefully enough to judge how solid its odology was.* Two things I wondered about, maybe because I missed where the authors addressed them:
1. How confident are they that their participants were reporting all their activity accurately?
2. How did they determine washout periods (e.g., from previous trial's last dose, check out, or last event to next trial's screening, check in, or dose)?
BTW, if I have time/motivation and detect interest on this board, I might compile a bibliography on research like that, about clinical-trial participants. Not sure what its scope would be (e.g., only Phase 1 drug trials or broader), but finding several studies should be fairly easy by using various standard lit-search strategies, maybe starting with the above study's "citation network" (i.e., cited and citing studies) and doing the same with its second author's fairly extensive work on this topic:
www.jillfisher.net/copy-of-papers-on-clinical-trials
*As a statistician and research odologist, I tend to pay more attention to research quality than the average person; not all studies are created equal! My experience with qualitative research is minimal, though, so studies like this are tough to critically appraise -- might check the EQUATOR Network for guidance.
