Rheumatoid factor (RF) was measured by standard laboratory methods at the participating clinics.
Due to the heterogeneous study setting we are dependent on the diverse working methods of the participating healthcare providers.
The second step in developing the protocol was to obtain information about current training methods from the participating MRCs, to be able to design a training protocol that would reflect the daily practice of the MRCs and that would be easy to implement after the study has been finished.
It is also possible that assessment and data collection methods at the participating sites around the world may not be sufficiently standardized and/or that Registry enrollment biases, perhaps based on regional disease classification, symptom severity, and symptom reporting practices, affected the results.
Feasibility and validation of the SLN biopsy method of the participating centres have been demonstrated by the Austrian Sentinel Node Biopsy Study Group previously.
Furthermore, the influence of the self-test program on the number of newly diagnosed kidney complaints and disease could be underestimated because of the used registration method of the participating GPs.
Unfortunately, we cannot comment on the merit and pitfalls of the various methods used by the participating teams, because only anonymous rankings are provided by the organizers, so as to encourage submissions of experimental methods.
Exposure data collected with standardized methods over all the participating countries were available for PM2.5 and ozone from the European air quality monitoring system (AirBase 2009) (see Table 2).
Mr. Meier described his method of selecting the participating architects this way: "I didn't sit down like it was a Chinese meal, with one from Column A and one from Column B. I had a basic list, and I thought I'd throw in a couple of old friends in order to give it a little aged wisdom".
The principal study limitation involves the sampling method used in the participating ambulatory cancer clinics.
Provisions regarding the mode of patient recruitment were included in 19%% of the NIS protocols, and 41%% provided information on the method of recruiting the participating HCP.
