If, despite the stratified randomization procedure, the groups are not comparable on one or more background variables, those variables will be employed routinely as covariates in subsequent analyses.
If the groups are not comparable on one or more background variables, those variables will be employed routinely as covariates in subsequent analyses.
If, despite the stratified randomization procedures, the groups are found not to be comparable on one or more background variables, those variables will be employed routinely as covariates in subsequent analyses.
Background details and socio-demographic variables will be collected by questionnaire including age, marital status, occupation, gross annual family income, educational level, ethnic origin, language spoke at home, socioeconomic status (SES) and postcode.
Then background information including sociodemographic characteristics and all outcome variables will be summarised based on the implementation conditions.
Candidate prognostic variables will be categorised into demographic background, and symptoms and signs (for example, overall illness severity, fever, shortness of breath).
Exploratory analysis will be conducted first for outcome and patient background variables; descriptive statistics of each variable will be presented separately for each group at each follow-up point, with means and SD for normally distributed variables, medians (IQR) for skewed variables and frequency (percentage) for categorical variables.
One variable will be in the audience.
