| Methods |
Design: four group parallel trial
Purpose: examine the effect of cognitive and behavioural social skills training with intellectually handicapped adults |
| Participants |
Patients: institutionalised intellectually handicapped adults
Baseline comparability: yes (outcomes) |
| Interventions |
Placebo: unstructured training in 'money management'
Untreated: no training
Experimental:
‐cognitive social skills training
‐behavioural social skills training
(Co‐intervention: standard care) |
| Outcomes |
Social skills assessment chart
Staff questionnaire on social skills
Preschool interpersonal problem solving |
| Notes |
|
| Risk of bias |
| Bias |
Authors' judgement |
Support for judgement |
| Adequate sequence generation? |
Unclear risk |
NS |
| Allocation concealment? |
Unclear risk |
NS |
| Blinding?
Treatment provider |
High risk |
Not described as double‐blind (placebo/training) |
| Blinding?
Outcome assessor |
Low risk |
'None of the raters participated in the training programme or were aware of S‐group allocation' |
| Incomplete outcome data addressed?
All outcomes |
Low risk |
Drop‐out < 15% |
| Free of selective reporting? |
Unclear risk |
No protocol available |
| Free of other bias? |
Low risk |
|
| No signs of variance inequality or skewness? |
Low risk |
No variance inequality (F‐test not statistically significant) and no skewness (1.64 standard deviations does not exceed the mean) |
| Trial size > 49? |
High risk |
N = 24 |
| Clearly concealed allocation + trial size > 49 + drop‐out max 15% |
High risk |
Trial size < 49 |
