Response to letter to editor “Only ITT analysis provides information about the actual effects of a health policy”

We thank Bender et  al for their reply and will briefly provide some comments. With its firm focus on internal validity, a randomized controlled trial (RCT) is first and foremost used to estimate intervention effects. Why else use such a firm design? In our reply to the original letter, we merely argued that under th e assumption of noncompliance bias, that is first, incomplete participation, and second, differences between actual participants and nonparticipants, then a complier average causal effect (CACE) analysis will provide a less-biased estimate of the intervention effects (not the population effects) tha n an intention to treat (ITT) analysis and a per-protocol analysis [1].

Source: Journal of Clinical Epidemiology - November 10, 2018 Category: Epidemiology Authors: Lars Bruun Larsen, Trine Thilsing, Jens Sondergaard, Anne-Louise Bjerregaard Tags: Letter to the Editor Source Type: research