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A randomized controlled trial (or randomized control trial; [2] RCT) is a form of scientific experiment used to control factors not under direct experimental control. Examples of RCTs are clinical trials that compare the effects of drugs, surgical techniques, medical devices , diagnostic procedures , diets or other medical treatments.
Random assignment or random placement is an experimental technique for assigning human participants or animal subjects to different groups in an experiment (e.g., a treatment group versus a control group) using randomization, such as by a chance procedure (e.g., flipping a coin) or a random number generator. [1]
In the statistical theory of design of experiments, randomization involves randomly allocating the experimental units across the treatment groups.For example, if an experiment compares a new drug against a standard drug, then the patients should be allocated to either the new drug or to the standard drug control using randomization.
Randomization is a statistical process in which a random mechanism is employed to select a sample from a population or assign subjects to different groups. [1] [2] [3] The process is crucial in ensuring the random allocation of experimental units or treatment protocols, thereby minimizing selection bias and enhancing the statistical validity. [4]
In an experiment with random assignment, study units have the same chance of being assigned to a given treatment condition. As such, random assignment ensures that both the experimental and control groups are equivalent. In a quasi-experimental design, assignment to a given treatment condition is based on something other than random assignment.
In medicine an intention-to-treat (ITT) analysis of the results of a randomized controlled trial is based on the initial treatment assignment and not on the treatment eventually received. ITT analysis is intended to avoid various misleading artifacts that can arise in intervention research such as non-random attrition of participants from the ...
Cohort studies differ from clinical trials in that no intervention, treatment, or exposure is administered to participants in a cohort design; and no control group is defined. Rather, cohort studies are largely about the life histories of segments of populations and the individual people who constitute these segments.
Randomized, controlled, crossover experiments are especially important in health care. In a randomized clinical trial , the subjects are randomly assigned treatments. When such a trial is a repeated measures design, the subjects are randomly assigned to a sequence of treatments.