Types of Trial Design

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3. Randomised Controlled Clinical Trial Designs

3.5. Matched Pair Trial Design

Randomisation is not always a practical or ethical method of assigning a participant to a comparison group. For example, we cannot assign individuals to wear a seat-belt or not to use it in an attempt to assess the effect of seat-belts in car accidents. In such situations, the method of matched pair design is widely used. This design can be used when the experiment has only two treatment conditions. In the matched-pair design, participants are first matched in pairs according to certain characteristics. Then, each member of a pair is randomly assigned to one of the two different study subgroups. This allows comparison between similar study participants who undergo different study procedures.

Matching is typically used in comparative observational studies, in which participants are either self-selected into identifiable groups (e.g. seat-belt wearers and not) or individuals have fixed, pre-determined characteristics that dictate their group membership (e.g. males and females). The primary advantage of matching is that biases due to baseline group differences are minimised, thereby reducing the variability, and increasing the precision, of the group comparisons.

Image explaining the matched pairs trial: participants self-select into groups or are grouped by common characteristics

Advantages

  • There is less variability found in results, and it can be applied to most diseases.
Disadvantages

  • Based on similarity within the selected groups, the researcher needs awareness of factors that could influence results (confounding variables).