Randomisation will be performed centrally at the UK Cochrane Centre in Oxford. A minimisation scheme will be used to attempt to balance suspected potential confounding variables across intervention groups. We consider the following to be factors highly likely to affect response from investigators:
- Most recent date of certainty about the investigator's address (or date of trial publication)
- Amount, and nature, of information required
- Surface mail or email contact
- Previous contact between the investigator and the reviewer
- Involvement of the investigator with the Cochrane Collaboration
Reviewers will be required to assign codes for each of these items before randomising an investigator into First Contact.
On contacting the randomisation centre, usually by email or fax, reviewers will submit their name; the title of their review; the Cochrane Review Group in which this review is being performed; an ID for the study; and details of each investigator sufficient to enable the minimisation randomisation (including whether surface mail or email will be used). The Data Collection Form will facilitate the collation of this information. The randomised allocation will be sent to the reviewer and, once randomised, the investigators will be part of the trial and will be included in the analysis irrespective of whether or not they receive the allocated intervention (an intention-to-treat analysis).
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