ArticleStatistics in medicine2017
Economic evaluation of factorial randomised controlled trials: challenges, methods and recommendations.
Article in Statistics in medicine, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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
20 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Which interactions matter in economic evaluations? A systematic review and simulation study.BMC medical research methodology · 2020Pooled it
- Supporting endocrine therapy adherence in women with breast cancer: findings from the ROSETA pilot fractional factorial randomized trial.Annals of behavioral medicine : a publication of the Society of Behavioral Medicine · 2025Trial
- Progressive exercise compared with best-practice advice, with or without corticosteroid injection, for rotator cuff disorders: the GRASP factorial RCT.Health technology assessment (Winchester, England) · 2021Trial
- Cost of community-led larval source management and house improvement for malaria control: a cost analysis within a cluster-randomized trial in a rural district in Malawi.Malaria journal · 2021Trial
- Economic Evaluation of Factorial Trials: Cost-Utility Analysis of the Atorvastatin in Factorial With Omega EE90 Risk Reduction in Diabetes 2 × 2 × 2 Factorial Trial of Atorvastatin, Omega-3 Fish Oil, and Action Planning.Value in health : the journal of the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research · 2020Trial
- Comparative economic evaluation of quetiapine plus lamotrigine combination vs quetiapine monotherapy (and folic acid vs placebo) in patients with bipolar depression (CEQUEL).Bipolar disorders · 2018Trial
- A cost-consequence analysis of the children's administration oxygenation strategies trial (COAST) in severe pneumonia.PLOS global public health · 2026Article
- Guidance for protocol content and reporting of factorial randomised trials: explanation and elaboration of the CONSORT 2010 and SPIRIT 2013 extensions.BMJ (Clinical research ed.) · 2025Article
- Article
- Addressing rural health disparities by optimizing "high-touch" intervention components in digital obesity treatment: The iREACH Rural study.Contemporary clinical trials · 2024Article
- When should factorial designs be used for late-phase randomised controlled trials?Clinical trials (London, England) · 2024Review
- Review
- Consensus Statement for Protocols of Factorial Randomized Trials: Extension of the SPIRIT 2013 Statement.JAMA network open · 2023Article
- Study protocol for a factorial-randomized controlled trial evaluating the implementation, costs, effectiveness, and sustainment of digital therapeutics for substance use disorder in primary care (DIGITS Trial).Implementation science : IS · 2023Article
- Reducing exacerbations in children and adults with primary ciliary dyskinesia using erdosteine and/or azithromycin therapy (REPEAT trial): study protocol for a multicentre, double-blind, double-dummy, 2×2 partial factorial, randomised controlled trial.BMJ open respiratory research · 2022Article
- Factorial Mendelian randomization: using genetic variants to assess interactions.International journal of epidemiology · 2020Article
- Partial factorial trials: comparing methods for statistical analysis and economic evaluation.Trials · 2018Article
- Decision Making for Healthcare Resource Allocation: Joint v. Separate Decisions on Interacting Interventions.Medical decision making : an international journal of the Society for Medical Decision Making · 2018Article
- Economic evaluation of factorial randomised controlled trials: challenges, methods and recommendations.Statistics in medicine · 2017Article
- Cost-Effectiveness of Metoclopramide, Paracetamol, and Ceftriaxone for the Prevention of Infections and Fever in Elderly Patients with Acute Stroke.MDM policy & practiceArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Increasing numbers of economic evaluations are conducted alongside randomised controlled trials. Such studies include factorial trials, which randomise patients to different levels of two or more factors and can therefore evaluate the effect of multiple treatments alone and in combination. Factorial trials can provide increased statistical power or assess interactions between treatments, but raise additional challenges for trial-based economic evaluations: interactions may occur more commonly for costs and quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) than for clinical endpoints; economic endpoints raise challenges for transformation and regression analysis; and both factors must be considered simultaneously to assess which treatment combination represents best value for money. This article aims to examine issues associated with factorial trials that include assessment of costs and/or cost-effectiveness, describe the methods that can be used to analyse such studies and make recommendations for health economists, statisticians and trialists. A hypothetical worked example is used to illustrate the challenges and demonstrate ways in which economic evaluations of factorial trials may be conducted, and how these methods affect the results and conclusions. Ignoring interactions introduces bias that could result in adopting a treatment that does not make best use of healthcare resources, while considering all interactions avoids bias but reduces statistical power. We also introduce the concept of the opportunity cost of ignoring interactions as a measure of the bias introduced by not taking account of all interactions. We conclude by offering recommendations for planning, analysing and reporting economic evaluations based on factorial trials, taking increased analysis costs into account. © 2017 The Authors. Statistics in Medicine published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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.