Table 3 Cancer clinical trial understanding

Q#10 Which method do you think would be more effective in determining the effectiveness of the new drug?

1. Give the new drug to 1000 newly diagnosed cancer patients.

100

14.8

2. Give the new drug to 500 newly diagnosed cancer patients and give the currently used drug to 500 other newly diagnosed patients and see which group improves the most.

361

53.5

3. Not sure

214

31.7

Q#11 Randomization

1. Patients should be allowed to select the test group that they want.

214

31.7

2. Patients need to be assigned to a test group randomly to make the test accurate.

167

24.7

3. It doesn’t make any difference; either approach will work.

106

15.7

4. Not sure

188

27.9

Q#12 If a doctor were to tell you that patients in a clinical trial were to be assigned to the new therapy and the standard

therapy randomly, do you understand randomly to mean that patients would be assigned by:*

1. The severity of their disease.

235

33.0

2. An independent factor such as the two last digits of a patient’s telephone number.∗

38

5.3

3. The kind of health insurance that they have.

14

2.0

4. The doctor depending on which group needs more participants.

311

43.7

5. I am not sure what “randomly” means.

114

16.0

Q#13 If a doctor were to tell you that patients in a clinical trial were to be assigned to the new therapy and the standard therapy randomly, do you understand standard therapy to mean:*

1. An average cancer therapy, not the best and not the worst.

106

15.0

2. The best available therapy for that particular cancer.

317

44.9

3. A placebo or sugar pill with no medical value.

5

0.7

4. An experimental therapy involving a new drug for cancer.

79

11.2

5. I am not sure what “standard therapy” means.

199

28.2