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Randomised and non-randomised studies to estimate the effect of community-level public health interventions: definitions and methodological considerations

Overview of attention for article published in Emerging Themes in Epidemiology, September 2017
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  • Good Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (65th percentile)

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1 policy source
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Title
Randomised and non-randomised studies to estimate the effect of community-level public health interventions: definitions and methodological considerations
Published in
Emerging Themes in Epidemiology, September 2017
DOI 10.1186/s12982-017-0063-5
Pubmed ID
Authors

Wolf-Peter Schmidt

Abstract

The preferred method to evaluate public health interventions delivered at the level of whole communities is the cluster randomised trial (CRT). The practical limitations of CRTs and the need for alternative methods continue to be debated. There is no consensus on how to classify study designs to evaluate interventions, and how different design features are related to the strength of evidence. This article proposes that most study designs for the evaluation of cluster-level interventions fall into four broad categories: the CRT, the non-randomised cluster trial (NCT), the controlled before-and-after study (CBA), and the before-and-after study without control (BA). A CRT needs to fulfil two basic criteria: (1) the intervention is allocated at random; (2) there are sufficient clusters to allow a statistical between-arm comparison. In a NCT, statistical comparison is made across trial arms as in a CRT, but treatment allocation is not random. The defining feature of a CBA is that intervention and control arms are not compared directly, usually because there are insufficient clusters in each arm to allow a statistical comparison. Rather, baseline and follow-up measures of the outcome of interest are compared in the intervention arm, and separately in the control arm. A BA is a CBA without a control group. Each design may provide useful or misleading evidence. A precise baseline measurement of the outcome of interest is critical for causal inference in all studies except CRTs. Apart from statistical considerations the exploration of pre/post trends in the outcome allows a more transparent discussion of study weaknesses than is possible in non-randomised studies without a baseline measure.

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Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 143 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Unknown 143 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Master 24 17%
Researcher 19 13%
Student > Ph. D. Student 16 11%
Student > Bachelor 15 10%
Other 7 5%
Other 23 16%
Unknown 39 27%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Medicine and Dentistry 38 27%
Nursing and Health Professions 20 14%
Psychology 6 4%
Computer Science 5 3%
Environmental Science 4 3%
Other 22 15%
Unknown 48 34%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 4. 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 11 July 2021.
All research outputs
#6,863,517
of 23,001,641 outputs
Outputs from Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
#66
of 149 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#107,773
of 315,659 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
#3
of 4 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 23,001,641 research outputs across all sources so far. This one has received more attention than most of these and is in the 69th percentile.
So far Altmetric has tracked 149 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 13.8. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 55% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 315,659 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 65% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 4 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one.