26 January 2010

Psychometrics can improve medical trials

A simple personality test can help to predict which participants of clinical trials are most likely to drop out and possibly wreck potentially life-saving research.
 
A study by US researchers found the tests can also identify those at risk of missing data collection appointments, which can also ruin study outcomes.
 
Anthony Jerant, an Associate Professor of Family and Community Medicine at UC Davis School of Medicine in Sacramento, explained that the loss of data due to participants dropping out or missing appointments may be the reason why some drugs or therapies that seem to work during clinical trials fail when made available to the general public.
 
The results of the study make the case for more routine measurement of personality during enrolment of participants in randomised clinical trials, he added.
 
The study is one of the few to apply a well-established model in psychology research - the Five-Factor Model of personality - to the analysis of data generated by medical studies in general and randomised clinical trials in particular.
 
The Five-Factor Model has been widely used in psychology and psychometrics research because it allows scientists to measure the level of five fundamental personality factors within each individual.
 
Jerant believes that by routinely measuring personality using this model, researchers might be able to minimise missing study data, and therefore improve the accuracy of their research by targeting participants deemed most likely to drop out and keeping them engaged in the study.

 

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