Glossary

A randomized controlled trial, or RCT, is a study where people are selected completely by random or chance to either receive a treatment or clinical intervention, or to receive the control or standard of comparison. The standard of comparison is often a placebo or sugar pill in the case of medication trials, or it may be a standard practice or no actual intervention at all. A randomized controlled trial is used to measure the outcome of individuals, or participants, who receive treatments or clinical interventions. To assess the nature of the outcomes of participants, they must be compared to the participants who did not receive the intervention or treatment being studied. RCTs are, in short, controlled, comparative trials that are an extremely powerful tool within medical research. Randomized controlled trials are simple to organize and often easy to conduct; the most important factor is that the participants’ selection is absolutely by chance.

A random controlled trial, also called a randomized controlled trial (RCT), is a type of quantitative study that attempts to accurately assess the efficacy of one or more clinical interventions. In this study, participants are selected at random to receive one of many clinical interventions, one of which is usually a placebo or fake treatment. The placebo acts as the control against which to compare the results from the other participants who received the clinical intervention being tested. A random controlled trial is considered the most reliable method for testing the efficacy of new treatments because it prevents clinicians or researchers from being able to influence or skew the outcome of the trial in any way. They cannot choose who receives the placebo or who receives treatment and therefore cannot consciously or subconsciously select individuals most likely to benefit from the treatment, which would likely create false-positive results.