Observational studyThe journal of pain2025
Evaluating the representativeness of a cohort study of low back pain: Using electronic health record data to make direct comparisons of study participants with non-participants from the study population.
Observational study in The journal of pain, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
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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
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Transient and Long-Term Risks of Common Physical Activities in People With Low Back Pain.JAMA network open · 2025Article
- 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
12 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Representativeness is an important component of generalizability. Few studies have rigorously examined the representativeness of randomized trials or observational studies of pain or musculoskeletal conditions with regards to a wide range of factors beyond age, sex, race, and ethnicity. We conducted the first study of a pain condition that uses individual-level data to directly compare the enrolled study sample to the population from which it was drawn. We used electronic health record data from the Veterans Affairs health system to compare participants in an observational study of low back pain (n = 417) with the study population of potentially eligible non-participants who were contacted about the study (n = 15,218). There were no statistically significant differences between participants and non-participants for most factors examined, and differences when present were of small or very small magnitude. Participants were more likely to be older (odds ratio [OR]=1.02 per each additional year of age [95 % CI 1.01-1.03], p < 0.001), women (OR=1.59 [95 % CI 1.26-2.01], p < 0.001), have had a prior diagnosis of lumbosacral radicular syndrome (OR=1.37 [95 % CI 1.08-1.74], p = 0.01), and report lower pain intensity (OR=0.96 per NRS point [95 % CI 0.93-1.00], p = 0.04). Current smokers (OR=0.54 [95 % CI 0.39-0.75], p < 0.001) and people of Asian descent (OR=0.62 [95 % CI 0.39-0.98], p < 0.001) were less likely to participate. This study illustrates an approach to directly compare research participants with non-participants from the study population. This approach can be considered as a standard method to examine the representativeness of study samples in pain research. PERSPECTIVE: This article illustrates how electronic health record data can be used to directly compare the representativeness of participants in a study of pain to the study population from which participants were selected. This approach should be considered as a standard method to examine the representativeness of study samples during reporting.
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Registered trials
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