ArticleBMC medical research methodology2023
The impact of iterative removal of low-information cluster-period cells from a stepped wedge design.
Article in BMC medical research methodology, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 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
10 citing papers in PubMed, 12 citations in OpenAlex.
- Factors affecting power in stepped wedge trials when the treatment effect varies with time.Trials · 2026Article
- Grand rounds in methodology: improving the design of staggered implementation cluster randomised trials.BMJ quality & safety · 2025Article
- Optimal Allocation of Observations in Stepped-Wedge and Other Cluster Studies With Correlated Cluster-Period Effects.Statistics in medicine · 2025Article
- Inference for the treatment effect in staircase designs with continuous outcomes: a simulation study.BMC medical research methodology · 2025Article
- The relative efficiency of staircase and stepped wedge cluster randomised trial designs.Statistical methods in medical research · 2025Article
- Identifying Less Burdensome and More Cost-Efficient Incomplete Stepped Wedge Designs for Continuous Outcomes Collected via Repeated Cross-Sections.Statistics in medicine · 2025Article
- Designing stepped wedge trials to evaluate physical activity interventions in schools: methodological considerations.The international journal of behavioral nutrition and physical activity · 2025Article
- Reconsidering stepped wedge cluster randomized trial designs with implementation periods: Fewer sequences or the parallel-group design with baseline and implementation periods are potentially more efficient.Clinical trials (London, England) · 2024Article
- Optimal designs using generalized estimating equations in cluster randomized crossover and stepped wedge trials.Statistical methods in medical research · 2024Article
- Information content of stepped wedge designs under the working independence assumption.Journal of statistical planning and inference · 2024Article
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 at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundStandard stepped wedge trials, where clusters switch from the control to the intervention condition in a staggered manner, can be costly and burdensome. Recent work has shown that the amount of information contributed by each cluster in each period differs, with some cluster-periods contributing a relatively small amount of information. We investigate the patterns of the information content of cluster-period cells upon iterative removal of low-information cells, assuming a model for continuous outcomes with constant cluster-period size, categorical time period effects, and exchangeable and discrete-time decay intracluster correlation structures.
methodsWe sequentially remove pairs of "centrosymmetric" cluster-period cells from an initially complete stepped wedge design which contribute the least amount of information to the estimation of the treatment effect. At each iteration, we update the information content of the remaining cells, determine the pair of cells with the lowest information content, and repeat this process until the treatment effect cannot be estimated.
resultsWe demonstrate that as more cells are removed, more information is concentrated in the cells near the time of the treatment switch, and in "hot-spots" in the corners of the design. For the exchangeable correlation structure, removing the cells from these hot-spots leads to a marked reduction in study precision and power, however the impact of this is lessened for the discrete-time decay structure.
conclusionsRemoving cluster-period cells distant from the time of the treatment switch may not lead to large reductions in precision or power, implying that certain incomplete designs may be almost as powerful as complete designs.
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.