ArticleDialogues in clinical neuroscience2011
Pragmatic vs explanatory trials: the pragmascope tool to help measure differences in protocols of mental health randomized controlled trials.
Article in Dialogues in clinical neuroscience, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 40 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
40 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Systematic review of pragmatic randomised control trials assessing the effectiveness of professional pharmacy services in community pharmacies.BMC health services research · 2021Pooled it
- Haloperidol plus promethazine for psychosis-induced aggression.The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2016Pooled it
- Resource-Based Internet Intervention (Med-Stress) to Improve Well-Being Among Medical Professionals: Randomized Controlled Trial.Journal of medical Internet research · 2021Trial
- Technology to Augment Early Home Visitation for Child Maltreatment Prevention: A Pragmatic Randomized Trial.Child maltreatment · 2017Trial
- A Comparison of Methods for Testing and Implementing Community Health Interventions in Childhood: A Realist Review.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Concordance Between Survey and Electronic Health Record Data in the COVID-19 Citizen Science Study: Retrospective Cohort Analysis.JMIR formative research · 2025Article
- A 50-step walking test for analysis of recovery after decompressive surgery for thoracolumbar disc herniation in dogs.Journal of veterinary internal medicine · 2022Article
- Implementation of a novel malaria management strategy based on self-testing and self-treatment in remote areas in the Amazon (Malakit): confronting a-priori assumptions with reality.BMC public health · 2022Article
- Predictive Association of Low- and High-Fidelity Supported Employment Programs with Multiple Outcomes in a Real-World Setting: A Prospective Longitudinal Multi-site Study.Administration and policy in mental health · 2022Article
- The implementation of Journeying through Dementia: Strategies to run a successful pragmatic multicenter trial of a complex intervention.Brain and behavior · 2021Article
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- Generalisability of randomised trials evaluating perioperative β-blocker therapy in noncardiac surgery.British journal of anaesthesia · 2020Article
- Variability in Open-Field Locomotor Scoring Following Force-Defined Spinal Cord Injury in Rats: Quantification and Implications.Frontiers in neurology · 2020Article
- Clinical Trial Design-A Review-With Emphasis on Acute Intervertebral Disc Herniation.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2020Review
- Balancing Rigor with Complexity in Understanding the Impacts of Child Maltreatment Prevention Programs.Prevention science : the official journal of the Society for Prevention Research · 2020Article
- Pragmatic Pediatric Trial of Balanced Versus Normal Saline Fluid in Sepsis: The PRoMPT BOLUS Randomized Controlled Trial Pilot Feasibility Study.Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine · 2019Article
- Trends in the Explanatory or Pragmatic Nature of Cardiovascular Clinical Trials Over 2 Decades.JAMA cardiology · 2019Review
- Pragmatic trials and implementation science: grounds for divorce?BMC medical research methodology · 2019Article
- Study protocol for a pragmatic trial of the Consult for Addiction Treatment and Care in Hospitals (CATCH) model for engaging patients in opioid use disorder treatment.Addiction science & clinical practice · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In the pragmatic-explanatory continuum, a randomized controlled trial (RCT) can at one extreme investigate whether a treatment could work in ideal circumstances (explanatory), or at the other extreme, whether it would work in everyday practice (pragmatic). How explanatory or pragmatic a study is can have implications for clinicians, policy makers, patients, researchers, funding bodies, and the public. There is an increasing need for studies to be open and pragmatic; however, explanatory trials are also needed. The previously developed Pragmatic-explanatory continuum indicator summary (PRECIS) was adapted into the Pragmascope tool to assist mental health researchers in designing RCTs, taking the pragmatic-explanatory continuum into account. Ten mental health trial protocols were randomly chosen and scored using the tool by three independent raters. Their results were compared for consistency and the tool was found to be reliable and practical. This preliminary work suggests that evaluating different domains of an RCT at the protocol level is useful, and suggests that using the Pragmascope tool presented here might be a practical way of doing this.
Indexed as
Identifiers
21842618PMC3182001What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.