Define “randomized controlled trial (RCT).”
Consider this description of an RCT: Espada and colleagues (2016) conducted a test of the efficacy of a smoking cessation program for adolescents in Spain. Prospective participants were recruited using a convenience sample, then randomly assigned to either a program condition or a control condition. The control condition consisted of adolescents placed on a waiting list for the program. Six months after the program, 8% of the program group had quit smoking, whereas no one in the control group had. This difference was statistically significant. After 1 year, 43% of the participants were available for follow-up data collection; this proportion was similar across both program and control conditions.
Making explicit reference to the concepts of internal and external validity, highlight several potential strengths and weakness of this study.
What will be an ideal response?
A randomized controlled trial (RCT) is a research technique that uses random assignment to conditions in order to test the effectiveness of different drugs or treatments.
Strengths: The random assignment of participants to conditions helps preserve internal validity by ensuring that differences between participants do not vary systematically with condition. While the attrition rate was high, it did not vary across conditions. Given the initial random assignment, it is likely that internal validity was not further threatened by the attrition.
Weaknesses: Internal validity may be compromised by the failure to include a placebo or to use a double-blind design. There are several threats to external validity in the design. The convenience sample and the high attrition make it less likely that the results will accurately to the entire population of teen smokers in Spain.
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