1. Questions used to identify an authentic RCT.
| Process | Questions |
| Question 1 | Introduce myself and purpose: How do you do? I was a student of Lanzhou University, was doing a review about microwave tissue coagulation in the treatment of cervical ectropion. Purpose of my study was to compare the effects of variety randomisation methods. I had searched out a paper that published in (time, journal) written by you. Could you please tell me what method to be used in this trial? |
| Question 2 | If the subject cannot describe the method clearly, change the question like this: could you please tell me when a new participant enrolled, how did you decide which group the participant should be allocated to? |
| Question 3 | If there was any problem about the first author, the second author or others should be interviewed. |
| Question 4 | Next two questions aim to understand the category of support source for investigated study, I selected one of them or both: (1) Was your study funded by government or any other source? (2) Was your study for new drug development? |
| Question 5 | Judgment should be made immediately for whether it was a real RCT or not. If it be judged as real RCT, next questions aim to understand the status of allocation concealment: (1) Do you know allocation concealment? If so, please clarify. (2) Did you use any method to mask allocation sequence? If any, please clarify. |
| Question 6 | Next question aims to understand the validity of blinding particularly pay attention to whether the detector was blinded or not: Please tell me who were blinded in your trial? |
| Question 7 | We said "thank you" to author. |
| Question 8 | Finally, We needed to judge whether the subject knew well the trial principle or not: if anyone persisted in the method of randomisation as correct but actually wrong or ineligible, it should be judged didn't know; if anyone claimed that "I knew we performed not good enough" or "it was impossible to perform a completely correct RCT" and so on, it should be judged as knew well about the principle of trial but violated knowingly claimed the non‐RCT as RCT. |
| Question 9 | Put all of record in the form. |
RCTs: randomised controlled trials