Missing data in clinical trials: Pitfalls and remedies
Open accessAbstract
Clinical trials are a robust method to generate data to prove or disprove the hypothesis. One important issue after the enrolment of study subjects in a clinical trial is attrition and missing data due to any number of reasons. The missing data can be due to many factors like duration of trial (longer the trial, more risk of missing data), difficult to assess the outcome, type of intervention (surgical or medical), less adherence to study protocol (e.g. in psychiatric disorders), poor communication with study subjects (to explain about the study, procedures to be followed, follow-up schedule, poor response to patient queries), poor interpersonal relation with the study subject, etc.
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Missing data were handled by considering the overall mean of the scale or subscale.
“In case of missing data, we considered the overall mean of the scale or the subscale (Kaushal, 2014).”
From Feasibility, Acceptability and Preliminary Efficacy of Dialectical Behavior Therapy for Autistic Adults without Intellectual Disability: A Mixed Methods Study (2022) · cites this paper as Kaushal, 2014
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Missing Data in Clinical Studies: Issues and Methods
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“In case of missing data, we considered the overall mean of the scale or the subscale (Kaushal, 2014).”
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- Authors
- Kaushal, S.
- Affiliations
- Dayanand Medical College & Hospital (IN)
- Corresponding author
- Kaushal, Sandeep
- Venue
- International Journal of Applied and Basic Medical Research
- Published
- 2014
- Volume
- 4
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 6
- ISSN
- 2229-516X (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC4181137
- OpenAlex
- W1672161521
- Cited by
- 13
- References
- 2
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 1 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 2 · 2021: 5 · 2020: 2 · 2016: 1
- FWCI
- 0.35
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Licence
- cc-by-nc-sa
- Locations
- International Journal of Applied and Basic Medical Research (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Mathematics › Statistics and Probability › Statistical Methods in Clinical Trials
- Physical Sciences › Mathematics › Statistics and Probability › Statistical Methods and Bayesian Inference
- Physical Sciences › Mathematics › Statistics and Probability › Statistical Methods in Epidemiology
- Keywords
- missing data, clinical trials, attrition, dropout, protocol adherence, patient communication, trial duration, outcome measurement, missing data imputation
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