ArticleInternational journal of methods in psychiatric research2011
The statistical pitfalls of the partially randomized preference design in non-blinded trials of psychological interventions.
Article in International journal of methods in psychiatric research, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Association of Patient Treatment Preference With Dropout and Clinical Outcomes in Adult Psychosocial Mental Health Interventions: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.JAMA psychiatry · 2020Pooled it
- The Selah trial: A preference-based partially randomized waitlist control study of three stress management interventions.Translational behavioral medicine · 2025Trial
- Training approaches for the dissemination of clinical guidelines for NSSI: a quasi-experimental trial.Child and adolescent psychiatry and mental health · 2024Article
- Taking a chance: How likely am I to receive my preferred treatment in a clinical trial?Statistical methods in medical research · 2023Article
- Design and analysis of partially randomized preference trials with propensity score stratification.Statistical methods in medical research · 2022Article
- Outcomes of a Culturally Tailored Partially Randomized Patient Preference Controlled Trial to Increase Physical Activity Among Low-Income Immigrant Latinas.Journal of transcultural nursing : official journal of the Transcultural Nursing Society · 2018Article
- Low protein diets in patients with chronic kidney disease: a bridge between mainstream and complementary-alternative medicines?BMC nephrology · 2016Review
- Revisiting a non-significant findings study: a parent mentor intervention trial as exemplar.Applied nursing research : ANR · 2014Article
- Improving study design for antidepressant effectiveness assessment.International journal of methods in psychiatric research · 2013Article
- Patients' treatment expectancies in clinical trials of antidepressants versus psychotherapy for depression: a study using hypothetical vignettes.Comprehensive psychiatry · 2013Article
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
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Abstract
In a partially randomized preference trial (PRPT) patients with no treatment preference are allocated to groups at random, but those who express a preference receive the treatment of their choice. It has been suggested that the design can improve the external and internal validity of trials. We used computer simulation to illustrate the impact that an unmeasured confounder could have on the results and conclusions drawn from a PRPT. We generated 4000 observations ("patients") that reflected the distribution of the Beck Depression Index (DBI) in trials of depression. Half were randomly assigned to a randomized controlled trial (RCT) design and half were assigned to a PRPT design. In the RCT, "patients" were evenly split between treatment and control groups; whereas in the preference arm, to reflect patient choice, 87.5% of patients were allocated to the experimental treatment and 12.5% to the control. Unadjusted analyses of the PRPT data consistently overestimated the treatment effect and its standard error. This lead to Type I errors when the true treatment effect was small and Type II errors when the confounder effect was large. The PRPT design is not recommended as a method of establishing an unbiased estimate of treatment effect due to the potential influence of unmeasured confounders.
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