Certain research questions can be answered only by a particular study design, whereas
others may be examined by more than one study designs [
1
,
2
]. Thus, researchers are frequently puzzled to decide what is the appropriate study
design to answer a specific research hypothesis. There have been several published
analyses that have compared the results of studies examining the same research hypothesis
using different methodologies [
[3]
]. The results of most of these analyses showed that the findings of well-designed
cohort studies are similar to those of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) [
3
,
4
]. However, these systematic analyses did not compare the cost of each study design,
an issue commonly overlooked when evaluating the appropriateness of a research methodology
for a given research hypothesis. Unfortunately, there are very few published data
regarding the actual cost or the cost effectiveness of published studies [
5
,
6
]; we managed to identify only one study that focused on the comparison of the cost
effectiveness between different study designs examining the same research hypothesis
[
[7]
].To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
Purchase one-time access:
Academic & Personal: 24 hour online accessCorporate R&D Professionals: 24 hour online accessOne-time access price info
- For academic or personal research use, select 'Academic and Personal'
- For corporate R&D use, select 'Corporate R&D Professionals'
Subscribe:
Subscribe to Journal of Clinical EpidemiologyAlready a print subscriber? Claim online access
Already an online subscriber? Sign in
Register: Create an account
Institutional Access: Sign in to ScienceDirect
References
- Reliable assessment of the effects of treatment on mortality and major morbidity, II: observational studies.Lancet. 2001; 357: 455-462
- Choosing the best research design for each question.BMJ. 1997; 315: 1636
- Evaluating non-randomised intervention studies.Health Technol Assess. 2003; 7: 1-173
- Randomized, controlled trials, observational studies, and the hierarchy of research designs.N Engl J Med. 2000; 342: 1887-1892
- Clinical trials: are they a good buy?.J Clin Oncol. 2001; 19: 4330-4339
- Are clinical trials a cost-effective investment?.JAMA. 1989; 262: 1795-1800
- A nested case-control study of influenza vaccination was a cost-effective alternative to a full cohort analysis.J Clin Epidemiol. 2004; 57: 875-880
- Planning a clinical trial with allowance for cost and patient recruitment rate.Comput Programs Biomed. 1984; 18: 173-179
- Clinical trials in primary care. Costs of research should not be borne by service practitioners.BMJ. 1999; 318: 1484
- Efficiency optimization of the selection period in therapeutic trials.J Clin Epidemiol. 1997; 50: 793-800
- Excessive test costs in clinical research protocols.J Cancer Educ. 1991; 6: 93-97
- Self-designing two-stage trials to minimize expected costs.Biometrics. 2002; 58: 432-438
- The futility index. An approach to the cost-effective termination of randomized clinical trials.Am J Med. 1985; 78: 635-643
- The case-combined-control design was efficient in detecting gene-environment interactions.J Clin Epidemiol. 2004; 57: 662-671
- The cross-sectional cohort study: an underutilized design.Epidemiology. 2005; 16: 355-359
- Pharmacoepidemiology II: the nested case-control study—a novel approach in pharmacoepidemiologic research.Pharmacotherapy. 2004; 24: 1105-1109
Article info
Publication history
Published online: August 12, 2006
Accepted:
May 1,
2006
Identification
Copyright
© 2007 Elsevier Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
