Assessing Risk of Bias in Randomized Controlled Trials for Autism Spectrum Disorder

Aim: To determine construct validity and reliability indicators of the Cochrane risk of bias (RoB) tool in the context of randomized clinical trials (RCTs) for autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Methods: Confirmatory factor analysis was used to evaluate a unidimensional model consisting of 9 RoB catego...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Martins Okuda, Paola Matiko [UNIFESP], Klaiman, Cheryl, Bradshaw, Jessica, Reid, Morganne, Cogo-Moreira, Hugo [UNIFESP]
Format: article
Status:Published version
Publication Date:2017
Country:Brasil
Institution:Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP)
Repository:Repositório Institucional da UNIFESP
Language:English
OAI Identifier:oai:repositorio.unifesp.br:11600/58159
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2017.00265
https://repositorio.unifesp.br/handle/11600/58159
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:autism spectrum disorder
risk of bias
confirmatory factor analysis
meta-analysis
randomized controlled trials
Description
Summary:Aim: To determine construct validity and reliability indicators of the Cochrane risk of bias (RoB) tool in the context of randomized clinical trials (RCTs) for autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Methods: Confirmatory factor analysis was used to evaluate a unidimensional model consisting of 9 RoB categorical indicators evaluated across 94 RCTs addressing interventions for ASD. Results: Only five of the nine original RoB items returned good fit indices and so were retained in the analysis. Only one of this five had very high factor loadings. The remaining four indicators had more measurement error than common variance with the RoB latent factor. Together, the five indicators showed poor reliability (omega = 0.687; 95% CI: 0.613-0.761). Conclusion: Although the Cochrane model of RoB for ASD exhibited good fit indices, the majorities of the items have more residual variance than common variance and, therefore, did not adequately capture the RoB in ASD intervention trials.