Self-management open online trials in health [SMOOTH] an analysis of existing online trials [Protocol]
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Clinical Trials, Evidence Based Medicine, Global Health, Public Health, Science and Medical Education
- Keywords
- participatory research, Self-management, online trials, research involvement, citizen research, RCT methods, RCT protocol development, ThinkWell, PLOT-IT
- Copyright
- © 2016 Price et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2016. Self-management open online trials in health [SMOOTH] an analysis of existing online trials [Protocol] PeerJ Preprints 4:e2671v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.2671v1
Abstract
BACKGROUND: The use of public engagement and self-management in online clinical trials is growing with benefits, boundaries and minimal methodological guidance. This analysis explores whether running self-recruited online trials can provide trustworthy and useful answers to research questions. AIM: To systematically explore existing self-recruited online randomized controlled trials of self-management interventions and analyze the trials to assess their strengths and weaknesses, the quality of trials reporting and to report how participants were involved in the research process. METHODS: The Online Randomized Controlled Trials of Health Information Database (ORCHID) will be used as a sampling framework to identify a subset of self-management self-recruited interventions. The trials will be used to explore the qualities of self-recruited online randomized controlled trials and to evaluate how useful they are for obtaining trustworthy answers to questions about health self-management and citizen research involvement. This research employs participatory action research where researchers and participants work as collaborators. SUMMARY: This analysis can provide an overall view of effective methods for online trials and to provide insights into integration for online trials development as early as the protocol planning stage.
Author Comment
We welcome all feedback, suggestions, ideas and potential collaborations. We are interested in discussion with all including patients and members of the public, industry, policy makers and academics and look forward to responding to your feedback. (You can contact Amy Price by leaving a comment or at [email protected]).