ArticleQualitative health research2012
Participants' experiences of being debriefed to placebo allocation in a clinical trial.
Article in Qualitative health research, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed.
- Low-dose titrated amitriptyline as second-line treatment for adults with irritable bowel syndrome in primary care: the ATLANTIS RCT.Health technology assessment (Winchester, England) · 2024Trial
- Efficacy of acupuncture in refractory irritable bowel syndrome patients: a randomized controlled trial.Frontiers of medicine · 2024Trial
- Informing Adults With Back Pain About Placebo Effects: Randomized Controlled Evaluation of a New Website With Potential to Improve Informed Consent in Clinical Research.Journal of medical Internet research · 2019Trial
- Trial
- Altruism, personal benefit, and anxieties: a phenomenological study of healthy volunteers' experiences in a placebo-controlled trial of duloxetine.Human psychopharmacology · 2016Trial
- Effect of Unblinding on Participants' Perceptions of Risk and Confidence in a Large Double-Blind Clinical Trial of Chemotherapy for Breast Cancer.JAMA oncology · 2015Trial
- Transitioning from deceptive to nondeceptive placebo treatment to reduce pathological skin-picking.Discover mental health · 2025Article
- Review
- The Challenges of Ethical Review in Clinical Research of Traditional Chinese Medicine.Evidence-based complementary and alternative medicine : eCAM · 2021Review
- Informed consent and clinical trials: where is the placebo effect?BMJ (Clinical research ed.) · 2017Article
- Informing Patients About Placebo Effects: Using Evidence, Theory, and Qualitative Methods to Develop a New Website.JMIR research protocols · 2016Article
- When and why placebo-prescribing is acceptable and unacceptable: a focus group study of patients' views.PloS one · 2014Article
- The potential benefit of the placebo effect in sham-controlled trials: implications for risk-benefit assessments and informed consent.Journal of medical ethics · 2013Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Participants in placebo-controlled clinical trials give informed consent to be randomized to verum or placebo. However, researchers rarely tell participants which treatment they actually received. We interviewed 4 participants in a trial of acupuncture for irritable bowel syndrome before, during, and after they received a course of placebo treatments over 6 weeks. During the final interview, we informed participants that they had received a course of placebo treatments. We used an idiographic phenomenological approach based on the Sheffield School to describe each participant's experiences of being blinded to and then debriefed to placebo allocation. The participants' experiences of blinding and debriefing were embodied, related to their goals in undertaking the study, and social (e.g., embedded in trusting and valued relationships with acupuncturists). We suggest ways in which debriefing to placebo allocation can be managed sensitively to facilitate positive outcomes for participants.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What 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.