Reported characteristics of participants in physical therapy-related clinical trials

The inclusion of sociodemographic and anthropometric variables in published clinical trials enables physical therapists to determine the applicability of trial results to patients in their clinics.

The aim of this study was to examine the reporting of participant sociodemographic and anthropometric characteristics in published physical therapy-related clinical trials.

This was a retrospective review of clinical trials from 2 samples drawn from literature applicable to physical therapy.

Two reviewers independently extracted data from a random sample of 152 clinical trials from the Physiotherapy Evidence Database (PEDro) and a purposive sample of 85 clinical trials published in the journal Physical Therapy (PTJ). A database containing the occurrence of sociodemographic (age, sex, race/ethnicity, level of education, marital status) and anthropometric variables (height, weight, body mass index) in each article was created to generate descriptive statistics about both samples.

Among the sociodemographic variables, at least 90% of articles reported the sex and age of trial participants. Additional sociodemographic characteristics that were reported in 20% to 26% of articles were participant level of education and participant race/ethnicity. The reporting of anthropometric data differed between the 2 samples, with body mass index being most commonly reported in the PEDro sample (48.0%) and weight being most commonly reported in the PTJ sample (38.8%).

Articles reviewed were limited by year of publication (from 2008 to 2012 for PTJ articles and 2010 for clinical trials from PEDro) and to English-language-only literature.

The physical therapy literature would benefit from enhanced reporting requirements for both sociodemographic and anthropometric data about participants.