Other Terms
- The term retrospective study is sometimes used as another term for a case-control study. This use of the term "retrospective study" is misleading, however, and should be avoided because other research designs besides case-control studies are also retrospective in orientation.
- Superiority trials are designed to demonstrate that one treatment is more effective than another.
- Non-inferiority trials are designed to demonstrate that a treatment is at least not appreciably worse than another.
- Equivalence trials are designed to demonstrate that one treatment is as effective as another.
- When using "parallel groups", each patient receives one treatment; in a "crossover study", each patient receives several treatments.
- A longitudinal study assesses research subjects over two or more points in time; by contrast, a cross-sectional study assesses research subjects at one point in time.
Read more about this topic: Clinical Study Design
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