BMJ 1999;319:574 ( 28 August )

Letters

Preventing injuries in children

    Elements of trial's design and analysis might have biased results
    Authors' reply

Elements of trial's design and analysis might have biased results

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR---We overwhelmingly believe that trials should be carried out in primary care to assess child health promotion. Kendrick et al report the lack of effectiveness of a package of health injury prevention strategies delivered by health visitors.1 Before this lack of effectiveness is accepted, we recommend critical analysis of elements of the design and analysis of the trial that might bias results towards the null hypothesis. Further information is needed to enable the generalisability of interventions to be assessed.

Factors possibly leading to bias

  • The control group was potentially contaminated by health visitors and parents in geographically close areas.
  • Health visitors were selected because of their interest in research into injury prevention; control health visitors may have increased their injury activities in concurrent health promotion initiatives.
  • Were other injury prevention activities occurring at the time?
  • A high proportion of the intervention group (22%) did not receive any intervention.
  • . . . [Full text of this article]
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Relevant Article

Preventing injuries in children: cluster randomised controlled trial in primary care
Denise Kendrick, Patricia Marsh, Katherine Fielding, and Paul Miller
BMJ 1999 318: 980-983. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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