A simple Bayesian model for accrual (created 2006-11-17)

Suppose you are a researcher in charge of a long term study. You plan to collect data on 120 patients. The goal is to finish your study in ten years, which means getting 12 patients per year or one every thirty days on average. Recruiting patients though appears to be harder than you had expected. You recruited your first patient on day 56, 26 days behind schedule. The second patient is not recruited until day 93. About two years into the study (day 768), you have just recruited your 10th patient. It looks like recruitment might be behind schedule. Is it time to take action?

This webpage was originally published at the StATS website, which is currently unavailable. There is a dispute about the ownership of these pages, so I am only able to include a brief excerpt from this page.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License. This page was written by Steve Simon and was last modified on 2008-11-10. Need more information? I have a page with general help resources. You can also browse for pages similar to this one at Category: Accrual problems in clinical trials.