Meyer 2012.
Methods |
Setting: 151 general practices, Germany Recruitment: smoking patients attending practice |
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Participants | 3215 patients (113 excluded), age 18+, who reported any tobacco smoking within last 6 months 44% female, average cpd not stated, average age 41, 38% pre‐contemplators |
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Interventions | ∙ Brief advice from practitioner (10 minutes) plus stage of change‐specific self‐help manuals ∙ Two individually tailored computer‐generated letters based on stage of change, plus self‐help manuals as per first bullet above ∙ 1 plus 2 |
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Outcomes | Abstinence at 12 months, self‐reported as prolonged for previous 6 months Validation: none |
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Notes | 3 vs 1 used as test of individually tailored self‐help as adjunct to advice 2 vs 1 in Analysis 4.1; direct comparison of tailored materials and advice |
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Risk of bias | ||
Bias | Authors' judgement | Support for judgement |
Random sequence generation (selection bias) | High risk | Cluster‐randomised by practice Practices randomly assigned before recruitment Study authors note: "randomization was seriously undermined by obviously different mechanisms of patient selection for each study condition" |
Allocation concealment (selection bias) | High risk | Practices not blind to condition when patients recruited; differential recruitment rates by condition |
Blinding (performance bias and detection bias) All outcomes | High risk | See above |
Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) All outcomes | Low risk | 30% dropout in group 1, 21% in group 2, 29% in group 3 Study authors report that sensitivity analyses regarding assumptions about participants lost to follow‐up showed "same patterns of results" |