Controlled clinical trials
-
Control Clin Trials · Dec 2004
Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter Study Comparative Study Clinical TrialSymptom recording in a randomised clinical trial: paper diaries vs. electronic or telephone data capture.
Patients may be asked to register a symptom daily in clinical trials. A problem associated with this kind of registration is that patients do not always fill in the diary at the appropriate time. As there is evidence showing that memory is unreliable, this undermines the entire purpose of collecting daily data on paper diaries. We aimed to compare accuracy, autocorrelations of consecutive entries, and responsiveness in paper diaries (P-Diaries) with electronic diaries (E-Diaries) and telephone diaries (T-Diaries). ⋯ The results are consistent with the suggestion that data in the P-Diaries are not filled in at the appropriate time. Use of E-Diaries or T-Diaries improves quality and is recommended in future clinical trials.