Andreas is planning to conduct a randomised controlled trial to investigate the effectiveness of a new type of drug treatment for patients with schizophrenia.
Describe a procedure that Andreas could use to conduct his randomised controlled trial to investigate the drug treatment for schizophrenia.
AO2 ( 6 marks)
Credit up to six marks for an accurate procedure in relation to the
scenario (AO2)
For example;
- Andreas could select participants who have been diagnosed with
schizophrenia but are not yet undertaking a drug treatment
programme (1). He would need ethical approval to have a control
group without drug treatments to measure against as this
deprives patients of medical interventions (1). Andreas could
review patient case histories to score the severity of symptoms
prior to drug treatment as a baseline measure for improvements
(1). Someone other than Andreas would randomly allocate the
participants to two drug treatment groups where neither Andreas
or the participants would know which drug they were taking (1).
One group could receive the new drug treatment for 10 weeks and
the other group could receive a placebo drug treatment for 10
weeks (1). Andreas could record the success of each drug
treatment by recording the severity of symptoms in the five weeks
following the end of the trials (1).
Generic answers score 0 marks.
Look for other reasonable marking points.
(6)