PB, SDE and EM contributed to the interpretation and the presentation of the study.
Taken together, the present study provides further evidence for the psychometric quality of the DESC and opens new opportunities for sumscore interpretation through the presentation of normative data.
The performance of the three clustering methods was compared: (i) quantitatively using the number of subgroups detected, the classification probability of individuals into subgroups and the reproducibility of results, and (ii) qualitatively using subjective judgements about each computer program's ease of use and the ease of interpretation of the presentation of results.
The authors, of differing discipline (JB, a research fellow with linguistics background, JK, an academic family physician and CF, a consultant physician in palliative care medicine), each coded data independently, before discussing and agreeing a final interpretation and the presentation of broad categories, developed from coding, as themes in this paper.
However, due to the lack of a washout period, some doubts as to whether a cross-over design would be appropriate in HRQL studies, and to exclude potential carryover effects on data interpretation, the results presentation has been limited only to those data obtained from the first investigation phase, as in the randomized double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel study design.
The authors of this manuscript all provided expert advice regarding the design and conduct of the CHOICE study and the interpretation and presentation of the data; they also contributed to the writing of this manuscript.
TSBN contributed to the selection of instruments, and to the interpretation and presentation of the study in writing the manuscript.
The graphical output of the program provides an overview of the parts of the pathway modulated by microRNAs, facilitating the interpretation and presentation of the analysis results.
