Evaluating the representativeness of a cohort study of low back pain: Using electronic health record data to make direct comparisons of study participants with non-participants from the study population.

ABSTRACT: Representativeness is an important component of generalizability. Few studies have rigorously examined the representativeness of randomized trials or observational studies of pain or musculoskeletal conditions with regards to a wide range of factors beyond age, sex, race, and ethnicity. We conducted the first study of a pain condition that uses individual-level data to directly compare the enrolled study sample to the population from which it was drawn. We used electronic health record data from the Veterans Affairs health system to compare participants in an observational study of low back pain (n = 417) with the study population of potentially eligible non-participants who were contacted about the study (n = 15,218). There were no statistically significant differences between participant

SUBMITTER: Suri P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11781970 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature