The Cochrane Methodology Register (CMR) is a bibliography of publications that report on methods used in the conduct of controlled trials. It includes journal articles, books, and conference proceedings, and the content is sourced from MEDLINE and hand searches. CMR contains studies of methods used in reviews and more general methodological studies that could be relevant to anyone preparing systematic reviews. CMR records contain the title of the article, information on where it was published (bibliographic details), and, in some cases, a summary of the article. They do not contain the full text of the article.
The CMR was produced by the Cochrane UK, until 31st May 2012. There are currently no plans to reinstate the CMR and it is not receiving updates.* If you have any queries, please contact the Cochrane Community Service Team (support@cochrane.org).
The Publishers, John Wiley & Sons Ltd, thanks Update Software for the continued use of their data formats in the Cochrane Methodology Register (CMR).
*Last update in January 2019.
| Title | Selective exclusion of treatment arms in multi-arm randomized clinical trials. |
| Authors | Law MG, Emery S |
| Source | Statistics in Medicine |
| Date of publication | 2003 |
| Volume | 22 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 19-30 |
| Abstract | In this paper we discuss a design for multi-arm randomized clinical trials (RCTs) in which clinicians and their patients can selectively exclude one of the randomized treatment arms. This approach has the advantage that it should expedite protocol development, and allow easier and faster recruitment of patients into the trial. However, to preserve the randomized nature of treatment comparisons, not all recruited patients can be included in all treatment comparisons. This dictates that treatment arms are compared in a pairwise fashion, and that the numbers of patients included in different treatment comparisons may not be equal. The total trial size of a multi-arm RCT that allowed selective exclusion of arms would be greater than the size of an equivalent standard multi-arm RCT. However, the duration of time taken to recruit the study would be reduced. The implications for the design, monitoring and analysis of such RCTs are discussed. |
| CMR keywords | CMR: Evaluation methodology - bias in trials - random allocation;CMR: Evaluaion methodology - bias in trials - factorial trials;CMRA4 |
| Reference type | Journal article |