Experimental Study Design and Intention to Treat.

 Randomized trials are at the top of the hierarchy of epidemiological study design because they provide the most powerful evidence of a possible causal association between exposure (or treatment) and outcome. Find an article on a randomized trial in the news and write a summary about it. The article should not be from a professional source. Instead, it needs to be from a widely distributed news source, accessible to and written for a lay audience. Possible sources include, but are not limited to, online magazines, online newspapers, and health news websites. The study should be conceived by you, i.e., it is not appropriate to simply summarize an existing RCT. In addition, please provide a brief summary of your trial. That is, what is the intervention and comparison? Who are you studying, for who long, etc.? Also, be sure to discuss randomization, blinding, and ITT. Then complete a 2-page paper in which you propose a randomized trial to investigate an association of interest, elaborate on the specific advantages of randomization in your planned trial. Describe how “intention to treat” might affect the design and analysis of the experiment.