| Title |
Efficacy of psychosocial interventions in cancer care: Evidence is weaker than it first looks
|
|---|---|
| Published in |
Annals of Behavioral Medicine, October 2006
|
| DOI | 10.1207/s15324796abm3202_5 |
| Pubmed ID | |
| Authors |
James C. Coyne, Stephen J. Lepore, Steven C. Palmer |
| Abstract |
With increasing sophistication, successive reviews find weaker evidence for the efficacy of psychosocial interventions to reduce distress among cancer patients. However, these appraisals may still be overly positive because of reviewers' uncritical acceptance of flaws in the design, analysis, and reporting of the results of such trials. Using randomized trials from high-impact journals, we show confirmatory bias, selective reporting of the most favorable of multiple outcome measures, suppressing of null results in subsequent citations of trials, and dropping of data for patients least likely to benefit from intervention. The conclusion that typical cancer patients do not benefit from interventions to reduce distress is strengthened when these endemic problems with the literature are taken into account. Required registering of the details of clinical trials and adherence to CONSORT reduces but does not eliminate bias in the literature. |
Mendeley readers
The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 74 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Indonesia | 1 | 1% |
| United Kingdom | 1 | 1% |
| United States | 1 | 1% |
| Australia | 1 | 1% |
| Unknown | 70 | 95% |
Demographic breakdown
| Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Student > Ph. D. Student | 12 | 16% |
| Researcher | 12 | 16% |
| Unspecified | 6 | 8% |
| Professor > Associate Professor | 6 | 8% |
| Student > Master | 6 | 8% |
| Other | 22 | 30% |
| Unknown | 10 | 14% |
| Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Psychology | 33 | 45% |
| Medicine and Dentistry | 11 | 15% |
| Unspecified | 6 | 8% |
| Nursing and Health Professions | 4 | 5% |
| Social Sciences | 4 | 5% |
| Other | 5 | 7% |
| Unknown | 11 | 15% |
Attention Score in Context
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 16. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 19 September 2014.
All research outputs
#2,181,128
of 24,917,903 outputs
Outputs from Annals of Behavioral Medicine
#246
of 1,474 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#4,313
of 81,630 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Annals of Behavioral Medicine
#1
of 6 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 24,917,903 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 91st percentile: it's in the top 10% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,474 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 18.4. This one has done well, scoring higher than 83% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 6 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has scored higher than all of them