Cluster Randomized Trials: Methodological Developments and Perspectives in Public Health Intervention Research
A special issue of International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (ISSN 1660-4601). This special issue belongs to the section "Public Health Statistics and Risk Assessment".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 November 2023) | Viewed by 207
Special Issue Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Cluster randomized trials, for which clusters of people (schools, general practitioners, hospital centers) rather than individuals are randomized, are becoming increasingly common. Once, health interventions were largely motivated by treatment drugs, but now evidence-based medicine is also required for primary care, in actions such as health and lifestyle advice, as well as the consultation styles of general practitioners. There have been a number of innovations developed recently, particularly in designs to minimize recruitment bias, ethics, sample size estimation, and specific statistical analyses such as the handling of missing data or taking into account between- and within-cluster variability. As such, this Special Issue will focus on methodological developments and perspectives in public health intervention research. Several reporting guidelines for cluster randomized trials were developed and are now necessary in order to publish papers with cluster designs of satisfactory methodology quality. However, in public health, interventions may be implemented through political convenience rather than scientific rationale, and so trials using non-justified cluster randomized design (stepped or not) are more likely to become widespread. Therefore, papers addressing these topics are invited for this Special Issue, especially those presenting the usefulness of cluster randomized trials, the difficulties in conducting such trials (for example during the COVID-19 pandemic or equivalent situations), and statistical and methodological proposals to solve and minimize bias.
Dr. Bruno Pereira
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- cluster randomized trials
- difficulties in conducting trials
- bias
- methodological developments
- statistics
