ArticleBMC medical research methodology2018
The Shiny Balancer - software and imbalance criteria for optimally balanced treatment allocation in small RCTs and cRCTs.
Article in BMC medical research methodology, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed.
- Implementation of the OHS-interRAI for regular oral health assessments by non-dental caregivers: focus group study using a SWOT analysis.BMC public health · 2025Trial
- Medication Review and Enhanced Information Transfer at Discharge of Older Patients with Polypharmacy: a Cluster-Randomized Controlled Trial in Swiss Hospitals.Journal of general internal medicine · 2023Trial
- Effects of Transcranial Pulse Stimulation (TPS) on Adults with Symptoms of Depression-A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2023Trial
- The Effect of Financial Incentives on Quality Measures in the Treatment of Diabetes Mellitus: a Randomized Controlled Trial.Journal of general internal medicine · 2022Trial
- Minimization of expected balance distribution differences: optimization of the randomized allocation algorithm based on the Pocock-Simon design.BMC medical research methodology · 2026Article
- Implementing mHealth for Schizophrenia in Community Mental Health Settings: Hybrid Type 3 Effectiveness-Implementation Trial.Psychiatric services (Washington, D.C.) · 2025Article
- The new injury severity score underestimates true injury severity in a resource-constrained setting.African journal of emergency medicine : Revue africaine de la medecine d'urgence · 2024Article
- Article
- Mind the gap: covariate constrained randomisation can protect against substantial power loss in parallel cluster randomised trials.BMC medical research methodology · 2022Article
- Article
- Improving inappropriate medication and information transfer at hospital discharge: study protocol for a cluster RCT.Implementation science : IS · 2018Article
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Abstract
backgroundIn randomised controlled trials with only few randomisation units, treatment allocation may be challenging if balanced distributions of many covariates or baseline outcome measures are desired across all treatment groups. Both traditional approaches, stratified randomisation and allocation by minimisation, have their own limitations. A third method for achieving balance consists of randomly choosing from a preselected list of sufficiently balanced allocations. As with minimisation, this method requires that heterogeneity between treatment groups is measured by specified imbalance metrics. Although certain imbalance measures are more commonly used than others, to the author's knowledge there is no generally accepted "gold standard", neither for categorical and even less so for continuous variables.
methodsAn intuitive and easily accessible web-based software tool was developed which allows for balancing multiple variables of different types and using various imbalance metrics. Different metrics were compared in a simulation study.
resultsUsing simulated data, it could be shown that for categorical variables, χ
conclusionThe Shiny Balancer offers the possibility to visually explore the balancing properties of several well established or newly suggested imbalance metrics, and its use is particularly advocated in clinical studies with few randomisation units, as it is typically the case in cluster randomised trials.
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