| Methods |
Design: three group parallel trial
Purpose: examine the effect of 'participant modelling' (snake handling) therapy on snake phobia |
| Participants |
Patients: individuals who were unable to hold a snake for 10 sec
Baseline comparability: yes |
| Interventions |
Placebo: sessions of 'graduated subliminal modelling'. Patients were exposed to blank slides and told they were subliminal pictures of snakes.
Untreated: no sessions
Experimental: sessions of 'participant modelling'
(Co‐intervention: NS) |
| Outcomes |
Behavioral avoidance test (18 successive steps of snake interaction tasks). Fear arousal accompanying approach. Anticipatory fear. Self‐efficacy expectations |
| 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/participant modelling) |
| Blinding?
Outcome assessor |
Low risk |
'The assessors were kept blind as to each subject's particular treatment condition' |
| 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 = 25 |
| Clearly concealed allocation + trial size > 49 + drop‐out max 15% |
High risk |
Trial size < 49 |
