Table 2.
Practitioner guesses associated with the three treatment modes.
| Practitioner (Experience as acupuncturist) | Type of treatment | Number of practitioner guesses | Total | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Guessed as penetrating treatment | Guessed as skin-touch treatment | Guessed as no-touch treatment | Unidentified | |||
| 1 (5 years) Κ = 0.05 (−0.30, 0.40) † χ2 = 9.5 (p = 0.15) ¶ | Penetrating treatments | 1 | 4 | 0 | 2 | 7 |
| Skin-touch placebo treatments | 0 | 1 | 4 | 1 | 6 | |
| No-touch placebo treatments | 0 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 7 | |
| Total | 1 | 6 | 7 | 6 | 20 | |
| 2 (7 years) Κ = 0.15 (−0.21, 0.52) † χ2 = 10.2 (p = 0.12) ¶ | Penetrating treatments | 1 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 7 |
| Skin-touch placebo treatments | 3 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 7 | |
| No-touch placebo treatments | 0 | 0 | 4 | 2 | 6 | |
| Total | 4 | 4 | 6 | 6 | 20 | |
| 3 (35 years) Κ = 0.26 (0.01, 0.52) † χ2 = 9.9 (p = 0.13) ¶ | Penetrating treatments | 2 | 0 | 3 | 1 | 6 |
| Skin-touch placebo treatments | 0 | 1 | 6 | 0 | 7 | |
| No-touch placebo treatments | 0 | 0 | 7 | 0 | 7 | |
| Total | 2 | 1 | 16 | 1 | 20 | |
| 4 (3 years) Κ = 0.10 (−0.22, 0.43) † χ2 = 4.4 (p = 0.35) ¶ | Penetrating treatments | 3 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 7 |
| Skin-touch placebo treatments | 0 | 2 | 4 | 0 | 6 | |
| No-touch placebo treatments | 1 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 7 | |
| Total | 4 | 7 | 9 | 0 | 20 | |
| 5 (10 years) Κ = 0.12 (−0.14, 0.37) † χ2 = 6.9 (p = 0.14) ¶ | Penetrating treatments | 2 | 2 | 3 | 0 | 7 |
| Skin-touch placebo treatments | 0 | 0 | 5 | 0 | 5 | |
| No-touch placebo treatments | 1 | 0 | 7 | 0 | 8 | |
| Total | 3 | 2 | 15 | 0 | 20 | |
| 6 (15 years) Κ = 0.18 (−0.05, 0.41) † χ2 = 3.6 (p = 0.46) ¶ | Penetrating treatments | 5 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 6 |
| Skin-touch placebo treatments | 5 | 0 | 3 | 1 | 9 | |
| No-touch placebo treatments | 2 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 5 | |
| Total | 12 | 0 | 7 | 1 | 20 | |
† Kappa coefficient (Κ) (95% confidence interval) between individual practitioner guesses excluding “unidentified” responses; ¶ Pearson’s chi-square value (p value) for comparison of guess numbers among the three treatments for each practitioner.