All procedures were explained to the participants, a written consent form was completed before the study procedures were started, and the study was carried out according to the guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki.
All biomarker analyses were completed before the study was unblinded.
This entire process was completed before a study staff member recruited another participant for enrollment.
A pretest was performed in which 21 Chinese-language versions of the diagnostic interview guide were completed before the study.
Volunteers were medically examined, and laboratory examination (blood biochemistry, haematology, and urine) was completed before the study to ensure the suitability of the experiment; the volunteers were forbidden from taking any medicine for 2 weeks proceeding to and throughout the study period.
An informed consent and medical screening was completed before starting the study protocol.
The data utilized for the psychometric validation analysis was from a clinical trial that was completed before the qualitative study was conducted (2012).
Introduction of routine therapeutic hypothermia, which may interfere with coagulation, was not performed because this study was completed before the publication of studies showing the benefits of therapeutic hypothermia in comatose survivors [ 37].
The V001 study was completed before the results from the STEP study (HVTN 502) became available; therefore, those results did not influence the conduct of the study [9], [10].
As test accuracy studies often do not report the study completion date, we may have included studies completed before 2005, that is, when the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors's (ICMJE's) registration policy was launched.
