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Control Group Design: Enhancing Rigor in Research of Mind-Body Therapies for Depression
Open accessAbstract
Although a growing body of research suggests that mind-body therapies may be appropriate to integrate into the treatment of depression, studies consistently lack methodological sophistication particularly in the area of control groups. In order to better understand the relationship between control group selection and methodological rigor, we provide a brief review of the literature on control group design in yoga and tai chi studies for depression, and we discuss challenges we have faced in the design of control groups for our recent clinical trials of these mind-body complementary therapies for women with depression. To address the multiple challenges of research about mind-body therapies, we suggest that researchers should consider 4 key questions: whether the study design matches the research question; whether the control group addresses performance, expectation, and detection bias; whether the control group is ethical, feasible, and attractive; and whether the control group is designed to adequately control for nonspecific intervention effects. Based on these questions, we provide specific recommendations about control group design with the goal of minimizing bias and maximizing validity in future research.
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“These findings need to be interpreted with caution, given that they arise from secondary analyses, and because it has been well demonstrated that comparisons to a passive control can both overestimate effect sizes and identify effectiveness erroneously (Davidson & Kaszniak, 2015; Goldberg et al., 2022; Kinser & Robins, 2013).”
From The effects of mindfulness meditation on burnout in clinical genetic counselors: A three-arm randomized controlled trial (2026) · cites this paper as Kinser & Robins, 2013
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“In addition to the lack of differentiation and systematic investigation, the methodological quality of yoga studies has often been poor [40,41].”
From Embodied Cognition in Meditation, Yoga, and Ethics—An Experimental Single-Case Study on the Differential Effects of Four Mind–Body Treatments (2022) · cites this paper as [41]
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“These factors might be unspecific, such as social support, group dynamics, or attention from the intervention teachers [41,73].”
From Embodied Cognition in Meditation, Yoga, and Ethics—An Experimental Single-Case Study on the Differential Effects of Four Mind–Body Treatments (2022) · cites this paper as [41]
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“However, these have been challenging to design and no gold standard active control for MM exists (Davidson & Kaszniak, 2015; Kinser & Robins, 2013).”
From The effects of mindfulness meditation on burnout in clinical genetic counselors: A three-arm randomized controlled trial (2026) · cites this paper as Kinser & Robins, 2013
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“ACM was designed to control for nonspecific aspects of meditation—such as dedicated self‐care time, structured practice, and expectation of benefit—while excluding explicit mindfulness training (Davidson & Kaszniak, 2015; Kinser & Robins, 2013).”
From The effects of mindfulness meditation on burnout in clinical genetic counselors: A three-arm randomized controlled trial (2026) · cites this paper as Kinser & Robins, 2013
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Metadata
- Authors
- Kinser, P. A., & Robins, J. L.
- Affiliations
- Virginia Commonwealth University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Kinser, Patricia Anne
- Venue
- Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2013
- Volume
- 2013
- Pages
- 1-10
- ISSN
- 1741-427X (ISSN-L)
- 1741-4288
- PMC
- PMC3638639
- OpenAlex
- W1994579861
- Cited by
- 155
- References
- 50
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 9 · 2024: 12 · 2023: 16 · 2022: 20 · 2021: 17 · 2020: 11 · 2019: 16 · 2018: 13 · 2017: 15 · 2016: 8 · 2015: 4 · 2014: 6 · 2013: 2
- FWCI
- 7.42
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Locations
- Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- VCU Scholars Compass (Virginia Commonwealth University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (5-T32-AT000052)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Mindfulness and Compassion Interventions
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications
- Physical Sciences › Mathematics › Statistics and Probability › Statistical Methods in Clinical Trials
- Keywords
- control group design, mind-body interventions, depression, yoga, Tai Chi, complementary therapy, methodological quality, performance bias, expectation bias, detection bias, women with depression, clinical trials
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