Liz Turner, PhD, John Gallis, Sc.M, and Fan Li, Ph.D student, recently co-authored a two-part review series focusing on methodological developments in the design and analysis of group-randomized trials together with David Murray of NIH and Melanie Prague of INRIA (France) and Harvard. The first article, focusing on design issues, appears in this month’s issue of the American Journal of Public Health, with the 2nd, focusing on analysis issues, to appear in next month’s issue of the Journal.
Part one of the two-part series focuses on group-randomized trial (GRT) methodologies from the simple to the complex. It includes a discussion fundamentals of the traditional GRT design and describes alternative designs that can be used to address potential challenges of the traditional design solutions to. The second part of the series covers problems that arise in the analysis of GRT’s. As a pair, the articles update a 2004 review by David Murray et al. and highlight developments of the past 13 years. The June AJPH issue included an editorial extolling the comprehensiveness of these reviews.
Inspired by the work on these two review papers, B&B faculty member Dr. Liz Turner organized an invited session titled “Recent developments in the design and analysis of cluster randomized trials” at the 38th Annual Meeting of the Society for Clinical Trials in Liverpool, UK in May, 2017. During the session, Dr. Turner’s talk focused on the key features of cluster randomization and recent advancement in alternative design strategies. Fan Li’s talk emphasized the application of constrained randomization in trials with a small number of clusters to achieve baseline covariate balance. Dr. Melanie Prague closed the session with a review of developments in analysis of GRTs.