Allocation concealment as a potentially useful aspect of randomised experiments

In experiments where subjects are allocated to different treatments, implementing allocation concealment simply means that procedures are used to prevent conscious or unconscious human bias influencing the allocation of particular subjects to particular treatments. It is a related, but distinct, pro...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inBehavioral ecology and sociobiology Vol. 71; no. 2; pp. 1 - 3
Main Author Ruxton, G. D.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Berlin/Heidelberg Springer 01.02.2017
Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Animal Ecology
Behavioral Sciences
Bias
Biomedical and Life Sciences
COMMENTARY
Design of experiments
Life Sciences
Selection
Zoology
Allocation bias
Randomisation
Selection bias
Blinding
Experimental design
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Summary:In experiments where subjects are allocated to different treatments, implementing allocation concealment simply means that procedures are used to prevent conscious or unconscious human bias influencing the allocation of particular subjects to particular treatments. It is a related, but distinct, procedure to blinding. Allocation concealment is a neglected, but potentially valuable, tool in improving the design of experiments, and it can always be applied inexpensively and easily to any experiment involving allocation of subjects between treatment groups. I feel allocation concealment should be adopted more widely.
ISSN:0340-5443
1432-0762
DOI:10.1007/s00265-016-2261-5