However, because I did not pretest my participants, I cannot quantify the extent of the influence or the nature of the effect, which are important considerations for subsequent research.
We do not have data on average pretest completion times in phase III; however, we do know that in the labs 15 30 min was available to take the pretest, as the quiz followed completion of that week's lab activity.
We did not assess the pretest probability, which could increase the relevance of the biomarker in certain patient populations.
Owing to the small number of people included in this meta-analysis and the lack of available information, we did not perform subgroup analysis by pretest probability of CD or UC (based on clinical assessment), or by disease severity or distribution.
We did not do so because, during the pretest of the instrument, we discovered that the respondents found it difficult to differentiate between hygiene and motivators and that sometimes they treated the two terms merely as the opposite of one another.
We did not provide students with answers to the pretest after they completed it.
Second, we did not include clinically unrealistic control patients without suspected infection, but only patients with a high pretest probability of CAP, covering the spectrum that is likely to be encountered in the future use of these tests [ 40].
We did not see any gender-based differences in the number of natural selection principles used in the pretest (z = 0.49, p = 0.6243) or post test (z = −1.202, p = 0.23).
We have not analyzed this, as the focus of the study was to explore how pretest expectations influence the interpretation of results at the level of individual patients, and we did not intend to explore the differences in interpretation between physicians.
