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Evaluating the impact of different control states in current psychiatric research design

Part of: BJPsych Advances Cochrane Corner and Round the Corner Collection

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 June 2023

Harry Williams Open the ORCID record for Harry Williams [Opens in a new window]
Harry Williams*
Affiliation:
Foundation trainee within Buckinghamshire Health NHS Trust, currently based at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, Aylesbury, UK. He has an interest in experimental medicine and research methodology.
*
Correspondence Dr Harry Williams. Email: harry.williams11@nhs.net
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Summary

A ‘control’ provides a point of clinical comparison for a new intervention, allowing researchers and clinicians to draw more confident conclusions about the effectiveness or potential harm of a given, often novel, therapy. Although this aspect of a trial's design provides the basis from which interventional impact is measured, it is often less closely examined. This commentary appraises a Cochrane Review that compares various controls in common use in modern psychiatric research and aims to characterise their effects on the outcomes of that research.

Keywords

Randomised controlled trialresearch methodologycontrol conditionsoutcome studiesstatistical methodology
Type
Round the corner
Information
BJPsych Advances , Volume 29 , Issue 4 , July 2023 , pp. 225 - 229
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Royal College of Psychiatrists

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Footnotes

Commentary on… Control interventions in randomised trials among people with mental health disorders (Cochrane Corner). See this issue.

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