Journal of clinical epidemiology
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Health care providers, policy makers, and importantly patients themselves are increasingly interested in the outcomes of clinical trials yet often expect different questions to be addressed than those commonly asked in conventional phase 3 trials. ⋯ Although we do not believe that RWTs will supplant conventional RCTs, properly designed RWTs will enrich our understanding of the effectiveness of new health care interventions and better inform patients and health care providers alike.
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We assessed the reliability and validity of two measures of change, one retrospective (the Global Rating of Change Scale [GRCS]) and one prospective (the Punum Ladder), and the relative utility of the two methods of assessing change and establishing the minimal important difference (MID) of the Cough Quality of Life Questionnaire (CQLQ), a reliable and valid cough-specific quality-of-life (QoL) instrument. ⋯ The prospective Punum Ladder is likely to be more useful, because it reflects the actual change in QoL over time in a less biased and more accurate way than the retrospective GRCS.