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Assumptions made in conducting randomized controlled trials |
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| Equipoise |
Patient and provider do not have a preference for a treatment |
| Lack of knowledge |
It is truly unknown which of two alternatives is "better" and there is insufficient evidence about treatment effects from other sources |
| Preference for specificity |
Only specific effects attributable to the intervention are therapeutically valid |
| Context independence |
There is a "true" magnitude of efficacy, or a stable effect size independent of context |
| Ecological and external validity knowable |
The knowledge about a therapeutic effect extracted from an RCT is readily transferable into clinical practice, if exclusion and inclusion criteria of the trial match the characteristics of a given patient |
Walach et al. BMC Medical Research Methodology 2006 6:29 doi:10.1186/1471-2288-6-29 |
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