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Sequential trials‐why do not more people use them?
Author(s) -
Mainland Donald
Publication year - 1967
Publication title -
clinical pharmacology and therapeutics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.941
H-Index - 188
eISSN - 1532-6535
pISSN - 0009-9236
DOI - 10.1002/cpt196784615
Subject(s) - recall , editorial board , psychology , clinical pharmacology , medical education , medicine , family medicine , library science , cognitive psychology , pharmacology , computer science
About two years ago that question was asked at a meeting of the Editorial Board of this JOURNAL. I undertook to try to find some answers, if other members of the Board would help by suggesting sources of information among workers who had more abundant and more varied experience with the method than myself. I thereby obtained a few brief comments from two investigators. At the same time I put the question to the readers of the mimeographed "Notes from a Laboratory of Medical Statistics" and asked for opinions based on personal experience. I recall only one reply—from a clinical pharmacologist who described a variant of the sequential design that he had used. This represented a response rate of less than 0.3 per cent of those who might have been expected to contribute, because a 20 per cent randomsample survey of recipients of the Notes in the United States gave an estimated otal of about 360 research workers in internal medicine and pharmacology, and this did not include workers in the same categories in foreign countries. The explanation of the low response rate might be that recipients were not necessarily readers; but investigators in those classes repeatedly showed their interest in the Notes and wrote frequently about other topics.