Chien 2003.

Methods	Allocation: randomised. Blinding: no. Duration: 4 weeks (follow‐up 1 month). Setting: inpatients. Design: parallel. Country: Taiwan.
Participants	Diagnosis: schizophrenia (DSM‐IV). N = 84.* Sex: M 43, F 35. Age: mean ˜ 42 years. History: illness (1‐35 years; mean ˜ 17 years), history of social skills training (19 patients).
Interventions	1. Social skills training: Group treatment phase ‐ 60‐minute social skills training course twice a week for 4 weeks to improve patients conversation and assertiveness skills (N = 35). 2. Routine nursing care treatment (N = 43).
Outcomes	Leaving the study early.* Unable to use ‐ Mental state: PANSS (only pre‐treatment results reported). Social functioning: Social anxiousness scale (IAS) (only pre‐treatment results reported). Social functioning: Interpersonal communication satisfaction scale (data not reported for control group). Social functioning: The Assertive skills scale (data not reported for control group).
Notes	*The number randomised is stated as 84. Eight losses to follow‐up are reported, but the final number in the analysis is 78.
Risk of bias
Bias	Authors' judgement	Support for judgement
Random sequence generation (selection bias)	Unclear risk	"A table of random numbers was used to select 28 subjects from the first subgroup and randomly assigned 14 of them to the experimental group or control group. This same procedure was repeated with the second and the third subgroups of subjects".
Allocation concealment (selection bias)	Unclear risk	No information provided.
Blinding (performance bias and detection bias) All outcomes	High risk	Not stated.
Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) All outcomes	High risk	"Two subjects in the experimental group withdrew from the study before treatment one because of medical disease that required an inter‐hospital transfer and the other who stabilized discharge from the hospital. Two subjects in the experimental group withdrew because they refused to participate. One subject in each of the groups withdrew during the training because of being transferred to another ward. Two subjects in the experimental group were excluded from the study because they were able to participate in less than half of the training sessions (four times)".
Selective reporting (reporting bias)	High risk	Not all expected outcomes reported.
Other bias	Unclear risk	Protocol not available. Sample size not calculated.