Selecting and describing control conditions in mobile health randomized controlled trials: a proposed typology.
review · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 37775522.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41746-023-00923-7 and PMC identifier 10541862.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Hundreds of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have tested the efficacy of mobile health (mHealth) tools for a wide range of mental and behavioral health outcomes. These RCTs have used a variety of control condition types which dramatically influence the scientific inferences that can be drawn from a given study. Unfortunately, nomenclature across mHealth RCTs is inconsistent and meta-analyses commonly combine control conditions that differ in potentially important ways. We propose a typology of control condition types in mHealth RCTs. We define 11 control condition types, discuss key dimensions on which they differ, provide a decision tree for selecting and identifying types, and describe the scientific inferences each comparison allows. We propose a five-tier comparison strength gradation along with four simplified categorization schemes. Lastly, we discuss unresolved definitional, ethical, and meta-analytic issues related to the categorization of control conditions in mHealth RCTs.