Conclusion There is preliminary evidence to suggest that a variety of physical activity behaviour change interventions targeting men with a history of prostate cancer can be efficacious , at least in the short term .
Purpose Men who are survivors of prostate cancer report a variety of psychological and physical factors contributing to a lower quality of life , and physical activity can assist to mitigate these issues .
This review aims to provide a summary of physical activity behaviour change trials targeting prostate cancer survivors , assess the feasibility of these interventions and , if possible , identify intervention and study characteristics associated with significant intervention effects .
Testing for baseline differences in randomized controlled trials: an unhealthy research behavior that is hard to eradicate
Background According to the CONSORT statement , significance testing of baseline differences in r and omized controlled trials should not be performed . In fact , this practice has been discouraged by numerous authors throughout the last forty years . During that time span , reporting of baseline differences has substantially decreased in the leading general medical journals . Our own experience in the field of nutrition behavior research however , is that co- authors , review ers and even editors are still very persistent in their dem and for these tests . The aim of this paper is therefore to negate this dem and by providing clear evidence as to why testing for baseline differences between intervention groups statistically is superfluous and why such results should not be published . Discussion Testing for baseline differences is often propagated because of the belief that it shows whether r and omization was successful and it identifies real or important differences between treatment arms that should be accounted for in the statistical analyses . Especially the latter argument is flawed , because it ignores the fact that the prognostic strength of a variable is also important when the interest is in adjustment for confounding . In addition , including prognostic variables as covariates can increase the precision of the effect estimate . This means that choosing covariates based on significance tests for baseline differences might lead to omissions of important covariates and , less importantly , to inclusion of irrelevant covariates in the analysis . We used data from four supermarket trials on the effects of pricing strategies on fruit and vegetables purchases , to show that results from fully adjusted analyses sometimes do appreciably differ from results from analyses adjusted for significant baseline differences only . We propose to adjust for known or anticipated important prognostic variables . These could or should be pre-specified in trial protocol s. Subsequently , authors should report results from the fully adjusted as well as crude analyses , especially for dichotomous and time to event data . Summary Based on our arguments , which were illustrated by our findings , we propose that journals in and outside the field of nutrition behavior actively adopt the CONSORT 2010 statement on this topic by not publishing significance tests for baseline differences anymore
Conclusion There is preliminary evidence to suggest that a variety of physical activity behaviour change interventions targeting men with a history of prostate cancer can be efficacious , at least in the short term .
Purpose Men who are survivors of prostate cancer report a variety of psychological and physical factors contributing to a lower quality of life , and physical activity can assist to mitigate these issues .
This review aims to provide a summary of physical activity behaviour change trials targeting prostate cancer survivors , assess the feasibility of these interventions and , if possible , identify intervention and study characteristics associated with significant intervention effects .