Search HealthWatch

HealthWatch student prize for the evaluation of clinical research protocols

The annual HealthWatch student prize for evaluation of clinical research protocols is generously supported by a grant from the Medico-Legal Society. It is open to medical and nursing / midwifery students.

The closing date was 30th June 2010; the competition for 2011 will be announced in the spring

The competition consists of four protocols for hypothetical clinical trials. Your task is to rank them by giving a rating =1 for trial that you consider is most likely to provide a reliable answer to the stated aim of the trial, and 4 for that least likely to do so.

You are assessing the quality of the protocols, not the desirability of the aim. Each protocol starts (as it should) with a "Scientific background" summarising previous relevant research. Entrants should assume this is work correctly cited from reliable sources.

You are invited to look at the protocols used in previous years for this competition. The documents will open in a new window and are in Adobe Reader format (.pdf).

Don't have Adobe Reader? It's free to download. Click here to go to the Adobe website and download the reader. The link opens in a new window.