Volunteer Bias in Recruitment, Retention, and Blood Sample Donation in a Randomised Controlled Trial Involving Mothers and Their Children at Six Months and Two Years: A Longitudinal Analysis

Sue Jordan, Alan Watkins, Mel Storey, Steven J Allen, Caroline J Brooks, Iveta Garaiova, Martin L Heaven, Ruth Jones, Sue F Plummer, Ian T Russell, Catherine A Thornton and Gareth Morgan

PLOS ONE, 2013, vol. 8, issue 7, 1-16

Abstract: Background: The vulnerability of clinical trials to volunteer bias is under-reported. Volunteer bias is systematic error due to differences between those who choose to participate in studies and those who do not. Methods and Results: This paper extends the applications of the concept of volunteer bias by using data from a trial of probiotic supplementation for childhood atopy in healthy dyads to explore 1) differences between a) trial participants and aggregated data from publicly available databases b) participants and non-participants as the trial progressed 2) impact on trial findings of weighting data according to deprivation (Townsend) fifths in the sample and target populations. 1) a) Recruits (n = 454) were less deprived than the target population, matched for area of residence and delivery dates (n = 6,893) (mean [SD] deprivation scores 0.09[4.21] and 0.79[4.08], t = 3.44, df = 511, p

Date: 2013
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0067912

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0067912

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