CASP criteria appraisal for RCTs | 1. Chiu et al., 2018 | 2. Denis et al., 2020 | 3. Freeman et al., 2015 | 4. Freeman et al., 2017 | 5. Sheaves et al., 2018a |
Section A: Are the results of the trial valid? | |||||
Q1. Did the trial address a clearly focused issue? | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Q2. Was the assignment of patients to treatments randomised? | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Q3. Were all of the patients who entered the trial properly accounted for at its conclusion? | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Section B: Is it worth continuing? | |||||
Q4. Were patients, health workers and study personnel blind to treatment? | No | No | No | No | No |
Q5. Were the groups similar at the start of the trial? | No | No | No | No | No |
Q6. Aside from the experimental intervention, were the groups treated equally? | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Section C: What are the results? | |||||
Q7. How large was the treatment? | Medium to Large effect | Small to medium | Large effect | Large effect | Large effect |
Q8. How precise was the estimate of the treatment effect? | d = 0.66 | d = 0.42 | d = 1.9 | d = 1.1 | d = 0.9 |
Section C: Will the results help locally? | |||||
Q9. Can the results be applied to local population or in your context? | Can’t tell | yes | yes | yes | yes |
Section D: Will the results help locally? | |||||
Q10. Were all clinically important outcomes considered? | yes | No | yes | yes | No |
Q11. Are the benefits worth the harms and costs? | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes |
Appraisal Summary: Score out of 9 | 6 | 6 | 7 | 7 | 6 |
Study Quality | Moderate Quality | Moderate Quality | High Quality | High Quality | Moderate Quality |