Tsang 2001.
| Methods | Allocation: randomised. Blinding: unclear. Duration: 10 weeks (3 months follow‐up). Setting: inpatients. Design: parallel. Country: Hong Kong. | |
| Participants | Diagnosis: schizophrenia. N = 97. Sex: M 60, F 37. Age: 18‐ 50 years. History: unemployed patients, have at least fifth grade education. | |
| Interventions | 1. Socail skills training with follow‐up support: basic social skills (facial expression, gestures etc.), basic social survival skills (personal appearance, tidiness) and core work‐related skills. Follow‐up support consisted of contact with group members and the trainer. Ten weekly group sessions lasting 1.5 to 2 hours, with approximately 6 to 8 people in each group (N = 30). 2. Social skills training without follow‐up support: same programme as described above but no follow‐up support (N =6). 3. Standard psychiatric care (N = 41). | |
| Outcomes | Employment. Unable to use ‐ Social functioning measures ‐ self‐administered check‐list score, role‐play test score, nonverbal skills (no means and SDs). |
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| Notes | The purpose of the training was to help mentally ill persons to find and keep a job. | |
| Risk of bias | ||
| Bias | Authors' judgement | Support for judgement |
| Random sequence generation (selection bias) | Unclear risk | Randomly assigned by residential facility, not individually. |
| Allocation concealment (selection bias) | Unclear risk | Not addressed. |
| Blinding (performance bias and detection bias) All outcomes | Unclear risk | "During the entire process of data collection, all participants and those responsible for rating participants' performance were blind to the group status of the participants, and participants did not know that there were groups with and without follow up." It is unclear if the control group was blinded. |
| Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) All outcomes | Unclear risk | There were no dropouts reported from the two intervention groups, but no information whether there were dropouts in the control group. |
| Selective reporting (reporting bias) | High risk | Not all expected outcomes reported. |
| Other bias | Unclear risk | Protocol not available. Sample sizes not calculated. |
Scales BPRS = Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale CGI = Clinical Global Impression GAS = Global Assessment Scale PANSS = Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale QLS = Quality of Life Scale SANS = Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms SAPS = Scale for the Assessment of Positive Symptoms Other CCMD = Chinese Classification of Mental Disorders DSM = Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders SD = standard deviation