Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Little is known about the degree that published reports of non-regulated interventions, such as psychological treatments, accurately reflect planned research questions and trial designs versus selectively reported positive outcomes and non-reporting of negative outcomes. The goal of this study was to evaluate clinical trials published in 2013-2014 in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology (JCCP), the top journal for clinical trials of psychological interventions internationally. We found that only 17% of published trial reports properly defined primary and secondary outcomes, which is necessary to make informed decisions about the effectiveness of an intervention. Just over half of trials were registered prior to publication, and only 2 of 70 trials registered enough information to ensure that published reports of results accurately reflected planned trial designs and analyses. This study demonstrated the need for increased examination of the registration and reporting of non-regulated health care interventions so that research results accurately reflect what would occur in actual clinical practice.