Difference between revisions of "10 Unexpected Pragmatic Free Trial Meta Tips"

From
Jump to: navigation, search
m
m
Line 1: Line 1:
Pragmatic Free Trial Meta<br><br>Pragmatic Free Trail Meta is an open data platform that enables research into pragmatic trials. It collects and shares cleaned trial data and ratings using PRECIS-2, which allows for multiple and varied meta-epidemiological research studies to evaluate the effect of treatment on trials that employ different levels of pragmatism and other design features.<br><br>Background<br><br>Pragmatic trials provide evidence from the real world that can be used to make clinical decisions. However, the usage of the term "pragmatic" is not consistent and its definition as well as assessment requires clarification. Pragmatic trials must be designed to inform clinical practice and policy decisions, rather than to prove an hypothesis that is based on a clinical or physiological basis. A pragmatic study should aim to be as similar to real-world clinical practice as possible, including in its participation of participants, setting up and design of the intervention, its delivery and implementation of the intervention, and the determination and analysis of outcomes as well as primary analyses. This is a major difference between explanatory trials as described by Schwartz &amp; Lellouch1 which are designed to confirm a hypothesis in a more thorough way.<br><br>The trials that are truly pragmatic must avoid attempting to blind participants or the clinicians as this could cause bias in the estimation of the effects of treatment. Practical trials also involve patients from different healthcare settings to ensure that the outcomes can be compared to the real world.<br><br>Furthermore, pragmatic trials should focus on outcomes that are crucial to patients, like quality of life or functional recovery. This is particularly important when it comes to trials that involve invasive procedures or those with potentially serious adverse events. The CRASH trial29,  [https://bookmarkmiracle.com/story19753986/the-no-one-question-that-everyone-working-in-pragmatic-product-authentication-should-be-able-to-answer 프라그마틱 슬롯무료] for instance, focused on functional outcomes to evaluate a two-page case report with an electronic system for the monitoring of patients in hospitals suffering from chronic heart failure, and the catheter trial28 used urinary tract infections caused by catheters as the primary outcome.<br><br>In addition to these features pragmatic trials should also reduce the requirements for data collection and trial procedures to cut costs and time commitments. Finaly, pragmatic trials should aim to make their results as relevant to actual clinical practice as is possible. This can be accomplished by ensuring their primary analysis is based on the intention-to treat approach (as described within CONSORT extensions).<br><br>Despite these requirements, many RCTs with features that defy the concept of pragmatism have been mislabeled as pragmatic and published in journals of all kinds. This can lead to misleading claims about pragmatism, and the usage of the term should be standardised. The creation of the PRECIS-2 tool, which offers an objective and  [https://bookmark-media.com/story18367525/10-things-your-competitors-lean-you-on-pragmatic-image 프라그마틱 사이트] 플레이 [[https://devendral284qyj6.dailyhitblog.com/profile please click the next site]] standard assessment of pragmatic characteristics, is a good first step.<br><br>Methods<br><br>In a pragmatic study the aim is to inform policy or clinical decisions by demonstrating how an intervention could be integrated into routine care in real-world contexts. This is different from explanatory trials that test hypotheses about the cause-effect relationship in idealised situations. In this way, pragmatic trials can have less internal validity than studies that explain and be more susceptible to biases in their design, analysis, and conduct. Despite these limitations, pragmatic trials can be a valuable source of information for decision-making in healthcare.<br><br>The PRECIS-2 tool evaluates an RCT on 9 domains, ranging from 1 to 5 (very pragmatic). In this study, the recruit-ment, organisation, flexibility: delivery and follow-up domains were awarded high scores, but the primary outcome and the procedure for missing data were not at the limit of practicality. This suggests that it is possible to design a trial using good pragmatic features without damaging the quality of its results.<br><br>It is difficult to determine the level of pragmatism within a specific study because pragmatism is not a have a binary characteristic. Certain aspects of a research study can be more pragmatic than other. A trial's pragmatism can be affected by changes to the protocol or logistics during the trial. Koppenaal and colleagues discovered that 36% of the 89 pragmatic studies were placebo-controlled, or conducted prior to licensing. Most were also single-center. Therefore, they aren't quite as typical and can only be called pragmatic when their sponsors are accepting of the absence of blinding in these trials.<br><br>Furthermore, a common feature of pragmatic trials is that researchers try to make their results more relevant by analyzing subgroups of the trial. However, this often leads to unbalanced comparisons with a lower statistical power, thereby increasing the risk of either not detecting or incorrectly detecting differences in the primary outcome. This was a problem during the meta-analysis of pragmatic trials as secondary outcomes were not corrected for covariates that differed at the time of baseline.<br><br>Additionally, pragmatic trials can also have challenges with respect to the gathering and interpretation of safety data. It is because adverse events are usually self-reported, and are prone to errors, delays or coding differences. It is important to improve the accuracy and quality of the outcomes in these trials.<br><br>Results<br><br>Although the definition of pragmatism may not require that all clinical trials are 100% pragmatic there are benefits when incorporating pragmatic components into trials. These include:<br><br>Incorporating routine patients, the results of the trial are more easily translated into clinical practice. However, pragmatic trials may have their disadvantages. The right type of heterogeneity, for example could allow a study to extend its findings to different patients or settings. However the wrong type of heterogeneity could reduce the sensitivity of an assay, and therefore reduce a trial's power to detect minor treatment effects.<br><br>A variety of studies have attempted to categorize pragmatic trials, with a variety of definitions and scoring systems. Schwartz and Lellouch1 developed a framework to differentiate between explanation studies that confirm a physiological hypothesis or clinical hypothesis and pragmatic studies that help inform the selection of appropriate treatments in clinical practice. The framework consisted of nine domains assessed on a scale of 1-5 which indicated that 1 was more lucid while 5 being more pragmatic. The domains included recruitment of intervention, setting up, delivery of intervention, flex adherence and primary analysis.<br><br>The original PRECIS tool3 was based on a similar scale and domains. Koppenaal and colleagues10 developed an adaptation to this assessment, dubbed the Pragmascope which was more user-friendly to use in systematic reviews. They found that pragmatic reviews scored higher in most domains, but scored lower in the primary analysis domain.<br><br>The difference in the analysis domain that is primary could be due to the fact that most pragmatic trials analyse their data in an intention to treat way however some explanation trials do not. The overall score was lower for systematic reviews that were pragmatic when the domains of organisation, flexible delivery, and follow-up were combined.<br><br>It is important to note that a pragmatic trial does not necessarily mean a poor quality trial, and in fact there is an increasing number of clinical trials (as defined by MEDLINE search, however this is neither sensitive nor specific) which use the word "pragmatic" in their abstract or title. These terms may signal that there is a greater appreciation of pragmatism in titles and abstracts, but it's not clear if this is reflected in the content.<br><br>Conclusions<br><br>In recent years, pragmatic trials have been gaining popularity in research as the value of real-world evidence is increasingly recognized. They are clinical trials that are randomized which compare real-world treatment options instead of experimental treatments in development. They involve patients which are more closely resembling the patients who receive routine care, they employ comparators which exist in routine practice (e.g. existing drugs), and they rely on participant self-report of outcomes. This method could help overcome limitations of observational studies, such as the biases associated with reliance on volunteers and limited availability and the variability of coding in national registries.<br><br>Pragmatic trials have other advantages, 프라그마틱 무료체험 메타 ([https://agendabookmarks.com/story18209811/5-laws-everybody-in-pragmatic-genuine-should-be-aware-of Agendabookmarks.Com]) like the ability to draw on existing data sources and a higher probability of detecting meaningful differences from traditional trials. However, they may be prone to limitations that compromise their validity and generalizability. The participation rates in certain trials may be lower than expected because of the healthy-volunteering effect, financial incentives or competition from other research studies. The requirement to recruit participants quickly limits the sample size and the impact of many pragmatic trials. Certain pragmatic trials lack controls to ensure that any observed variations aren't due to biases in the trial.<br><br>The authors of the Pragmatic Free Trial Meta identified 48 RCTs that self-described themselves as pragmatic and that were published until 2022. They evaluated pragmatism using the PRECIS-2 tool, which includes the eligibility criteria for domains, recruitment, flexibility in adherence to intervention and follow-up. They found 14 trials scored highly pragmatic or pragmatic (i.e. scoring 5 or more) in at least one of these domains.<br><br>Studies with high pragmatism scores are likely to have broader criteria for eligibility than conventional RCTs. They also have populations from many different hospitals. The authors claim that these characteristics could make pragmatic trials more meaningful and applicable to daily practice, but they do not guarantee that a trial using a pragmatic approach is free from bias. Furthermore, the pragmatism of a trial is not a fixed attribute; a pragmatic trial that does not contain all the characteristics of a explanatory trial can yield reliable and relevant results.
+
Pragmatic Free Trial Meta<br><br>Pragmatic Free Trial Meta is a non-commercial open data platform and infrastructure that facilitates research on pragmatic trials. It collects and shares cleaned trial data and ratings using PRECIS-2, which allows for multiple and varied meta-epidemiological studies that evaluate the effect of treatment on trials that employ different levels of pragmatism and other design features.<br><br>Background<br><br>Pragmatic trials are becoming more widely recognized as providing real-world evidence for clinical decision-making. The term "pragmatic", however, is not used in a consistent manner and its definition and measurement require further clarification. The purpose of pragmatic trials is to guide clinical practices and policy decisions, not to prove a physiological or clinical hypothesis. A pragmatic study should strive to be as close as is possible to real-world clinical practices that include recruitment of participants, setting, designing, implementation and delivery of interventions, determination and analysis results, as well as primary analysis. This is a major distinction between explanation-based trials, as defined by Schwartz and Lellouch1 which are designed to confirm the hypothesis in a more thorough way.<br><br>Trials that are truly pragmatic should avoid attempting to blind participants or healthcare professionals as this could result in bias in the estimation of treatment effects. Pragmatic trials will also recruit patients from various health care settings to ensure that the results can be applied to the real world.<br><br>Additionally, pragmatic trials should focus on outcomes that are important for patients, such as quality of life or functional recovery. This is particularly relevant when trials involve invasive procedures or have potentially serious adverse effects. The CRASH trial29 compared a 2 page report with an electronic monitoring system for patients in hospitals suffering from chronic cardiac failure. The catheter trial28 however was based on symptomatic catheter-related urinary tract infection as its primary outcome.<br><br>In addition to these characteristics, pragmatic trials should minimize the procedures for conducting trials and requirements for  [https://click4r.com/posts/g/18735691/what-is-pragmatic-return-rate-and-how-to-utilize-it 프라그마틱 무료게임] data collection to cut down on costs and time commitments. Finaly these trials should strive to make their results as applicable to current clinical practices as they can. This can be achieved by ensuring their primary analysis is based on the intention to treat method (as described in CONSORT extensions).<br><br>Many RCTs which do not meet the criteria for pragmatism however, [https://yogicentral.science/wiki/Ahmadlind0455 프라그마틱 슬롯] they have characteristics that are contrary to pragmatism, have been published in journals of different types and incorrectly labeled pragmatic. This could lead to false claims about pragmatism, and  프라그마틱 게임; [https://bbs.pku.edu.cn/v2/jump-to.php?url=https://duckworth-lindgreen-2.federatedjournals.com/learn-more-about-pragmatic-slot-manipulation-while-working-from-at-home https://Bbs.pku.edu.Cn/], the term's use should be made more uniform. The creation of the PRECIS-2 tool, which offers a standard objective assessment of pragmatic characteristics is a great first step.<br><br>Methods<br><br>In a pragmatic study the goal is to inform policy or clinical decisions by demonstrating how an intervention would be integrated into everyday routine care. Explanatory trials test hypotheses about the causal-effect relationship in idealized settings. In this way, pragmatic trials may have lower internal validity than studies that explain and be more susceptible to biases in their design as well as analysis and conduct. Despite their limitations, pragmatic research can provide valuable information to make decisions in the healthcare context.<br><br>The PRECIS-2 tool evaluates an RCT on 9 domains, ranging between 1 and 5 (very pragmatic). In this study the areas of recruitment, organisation, flexibility in delivery, flexible adherence and follow-up scored high. However, the primary outcome and the method of missing data were scored below the practical limit. This suggests that it is possible to design a trial using high-quality pragmatic features, without damaging the quality of its results.<br><br>It is hard to determine the level of pragmatism within a specific trial because pragmatism does not possess a specific characteristic. Certain aspects of a research study can be more pragmatic than other. The pragmatism of a trial can be affected by changes to the protocol or logistics during the trial. Koppenaal and colleagues found that 36% of 89 pragmatic studies were placebo-controlled, or conducted prior to the licensing. Most were also single-center. They are not in line with the norm and are only called pragmatic if their sponsors accept that such trials are not blinded.<br><br>A common feature of pragmatic research is that researchers try to make their findings more meaningful by analyzing subgroups within the trial sample. This can lead to unbalanced results and lower statistical power, thereby increasing the chance of not or misinterpreting the results of the primary outcome. This was a problem during the meta-analysis of pragmatic trials as secondary outcomes were not corrected for differences in covariates at the baseline.<br><br>Additionally, studies that are pragmatic can pose difficulties in the collection and interpretation of safety data. This is because adverse events are generally reported by the participants themselves and prone to delays in reporting, inaccuracies or coding deviations. It is important to improve the accuracy and quality of the outcomes in these trials.<br><br>Results<br><br>Although the definition of pragmatism doesn't require that all clinical trials be 100% pragmatist There are advantages of including pragmatic elements in trials. These include:<br><br>Incorporating routine patients, the trial results are more easily translated into clinical practice. However, pragmatic studies can also have disadvantages. The right kind of heterogeneity, like could help a study extend its findings to different patients or settings. However the wrong kind of heterogeneity can decrease the sensitivity of the test and thus lessen the power of a trial to detect small treatment effects.<br><br>A variety of studies have attempted to categorize pragmatic trials using various definitions and scoring systems. Schwartz and Lellouch1 have developed a framework for distinguishing between explanation-based trials that support a clinical or physiological hypothesis and [https://timeoftheworld.date/wiki/Why_Nobody_Cares_About_Pragmatic_Casino 프라그마틱 무료체험 슬롯버프] 카지노 ([https://hikvisiondb.webcam/wiki/Curriepallesen7249 Hikvisiondb.webcam]) pragmatic trials that inform the selection of appropriate treatments in the real-world clinical setting. The framework was composed of nine domains scored on a 1-5 scale which indicated that 1 was more informative and 5 was more pragmatic. The domains covered recruitment, setting up, delivery of intervention, flexible adherence and primary analysis.<br><br>The initial PRECIS tool3 had similar domains and an assessment scale ranging from 1 to 5. Koppenaal et. al10 devised an adaptation of this assessment, known as the Pragmascope that was simpler to use for systematic reviews. They found that pragmatic reviews scored higher across all domains, however they scored lower in the primary analysis domain.<br><br>This difference in primary analysis domains could be due to the way in which most pragmatic trials approach data. Certain explanatory trials however do not. The overall score was lower for pragmatic systematic reviews when the domains on organisation, flexible delivery, and follow-up were merged.<br><br>It is important to understand that a pragmatic trial doesn't necessarily mean a low quality trial, and there is an increasing rate of clinical trials (as defined by MEDLINE search, but this is neither sensitive nor specific) that use the term 'pragmatic' in their title or abstract. These terms may signal that there is a greater awareness of pragmatism within titles and abstracts, but it's unclear if this is reflected in content.<br><br>Conclusions<br><br>As the value of real-world evidence becomes increasingly commonplace, pragmatic trials have gained popularity in research. They are clinical trials randomized that evaluate real-world alternatives to care instead of experimental treatments under development. They involve patients that more closely mirror the patients who receive routine care, they employ comparators which exist in routine practice (e.g. existing drugs), and they depend on the self-reporting of participants about outcomes. This method can help overcome the limitations of observational studies which include the biases that arise from relying on volunteers, and the limited availability and the variability of coding in national registries.<br><br>Pragmatic trials have other advantages, such as the ability to draw on existing data sources, and a greater chance of detecting significant differences from traditional trials. However, they may still have limitations which undermine their validity and generalizability. For instance, participation rates in some trials could be lower than anticipated due to the healthy-volunteer effect as well as financial incentives or competition for participants from other research studies (e.g., industry trials). The requirement to recruit participants in a timely manner also restricts the sample size and the impact of many practical trials. Some pragmatic trials also lack controls to ensure that the observed differences aren't due to biases during the trial.<br><br>The authors of the Pragmatic Free Trial Meta identified RCTs that were published between 2022 and 2022 that self-described themselves as pragmatic. They assessed pragmatism using the PRECIS-2 tool, which includes the eligibility criteria for domains and recruitment criteria, as well as flexibility in adherence to intervention and follow-up. They discovered that 14 of these trials scored highly or pragmatic sensible (i.e. scores of 5 or higher) in any one or more of these domains, and that the majority of them were single-center.<br><br>Trials with high pragmatism scores are likely to have more criteria for eligibility than conventional RCTs. They also have populations from various hospitals. These characteristics, according to the authors, could make pragmatic trials more relevant and useful in everyday practice. However they do not guarantee that a trial will be free of bias. The pragmatism is not a fixed characteristic the test that does not possess all the characteristics of an explanatory study could still yield valuable and valid results.

Revision as of 01:43, 25 December 2024

Pragmatic Free Trial Meta

Pragmatic Free Trial Meta is a non-commercial open data platform and infrastructure that facilitates research on pragmatic trials. It collects and shares cleaned trial data and ratings using PRECIS-2, which allows for multiple and varied meta-epidemiological studies that evaluate the effect of treatment on trials that employ different levels of pragmatism and other design features.

Background

Pragmatic trials are becoming more widely recognized as providing real-world evidence for clinical decision-making. The term "pragmatic", however, is not used in a consistent manner and its definition and measurement require further clarification. The purpose of pragmatic trials is to guide clinical practices and policy decisions, not to prove a physiological or clinical hypothesis. A pragmatic study should strive to be as close as is possible to real-world clinical practices that include recruitment of participants, setting, designing, implementation and delivery of interventions, determination and analysis results, as well as primary analysis. This is a major distinction between explanation-based trials, as defined by Schwartz and Lellouch1 which are designed to confirm the hypothesis in a more thorough way.

Trials that are truly pragmatic should avoid attempting to blind participants or healthcare professionals as this could result in bias in the estimation of treatment effects. Pragmatic trials will also recruit patients from various health care settings to ensure that the results can be applied to the real world.

Additionally, pragmatic trials should focus on outcomes that are important for patients, such as quality of life or functional recovery. This is particularly relevant when trials involve invasive procedures or have potentially serious adverse effects. The CRASH trial29 compared a 2 page report with an electronic monitoring system for patients in hospitals suffering from chronic cardiac failure. The catheter trial28 however was based on symptomatic catheter-related urinary tract infection as its primary outcome.

In addition to these characteristics, pragmatic trials should minimize the procedures for conducting trials and requirements for 프라그마틱 무료게임 data collection to cut down on costs and time commitments. Finaly these trials should strive to make their results as applicable to current clinical practices as they can. This can be achieved by ensuring their primary analysis is based on the intention to treat method (as described in CONSORT extensions).

Many RCTs which do not meet the criteria for pragmatism however, 프라그마틱 슬롯 they have characteristics that are contrary to pragmatism, have been published in journals of different types and incorrectly labeled pragmatic. This could lead to false claims about pragmatism, and 프라그마틱 게임; https://Bbs.pku.edu.Cn/, the term's use should be made more uniform. The creation of the PRECIS-2 tool, which offers a standard objective assessment of pragmatic characteristics is a great first step.

Methods

In a pragmatic study the goal is to inform policy or clinical decisions by demonstrating how an intervention would be integrated into everyday routine care. Explanatory trials test hypotheses about the causal-effect relationship in idealized settings. In this way, pragmatic trials may have lower internal validity than studies that explain and be more susceptible to biases in their design as well as analysis and conduct. Despite their limitations, pragmatic research can provide valuable information to make decisions in the healthcare context.

The PRECIS-2 tool evaluates an RCT on 9 domains, ranging between 1 and 5 (very pragmatic). In this study the areas of recruitment, organisation, flexibility in delivery, flexible adherence and follow-up scored high. However, the primary outcome and the method of missing data were scored below the practical limit. This suggests that it is possible to design a trial using high-quality pragmatic features, without damaging the quality of its results.

It is hard to determine the level of pragmatism within a specific trial because pragmatism does not possess a specific characteristic. Certain aspects of a research study can be more pragmatic than other. The pragmatism of a trial can be affected by changes to the protocol or logistics during the trial. Koppenaal and colleagues found that 36% of 89 pragmatic studies were placebo-controlled, or conducted prior to the licensing. Most were also single-center. They are not in line with the norm and are only called pragmatic if their sponsors accept that such trials are not blinded.

A common feature of pragmatic research is that researchers try to make their findings more meaningful by analyzing subgroups within the trial sample. This can lead to unbalanced results and lower statistical power, thereby increasing the chance of not or misinterpreting the results of the primary outcome. This was a problem during the meta-analysis of pragmatic trials as secondary outcomes were not corrected for differences in covariates at the baseline.

Additionally, studies that are pragmatic can pose difficulties in the collection and interpretation of safety data. This is because adverse events are generally reported by the participants themselves and prone to delays in reporting, inaccuracies or coding deviations. It is important to improve the accuracy and quality of the outcomes in these trials.

Results

Although the definition of pragmatism doesn't require that all clinical trials be 100% pragmatist There are advantages of including pragmatic elements in trials. These include:

Incorporating routine patients, the trial results are more easily translated into clinical practice. However, pragmatic studies can also have disadvantages. The right kind of heterogeneity, like could help a study extend its findings to different patients or settings. However the wrong kind of heterogeneity can decrease the sensitivity of the test and thus lessen the power of a trial to detect small treatment effects.

A variety of studies have attempted to categorize pragmatic trials using various definitions and scoring systems. Schwartz and Lellouch1 have developed a framework for distinguishing between explanation-based trials that support a clinical or physiological hypothesis and 프라그마틱 무료체험 슬롯버프 카지노 (Hikvisiondb.webcam) pragmatic trials that inform the selection of appropriate treatments in the real-world clinical setting. The framework was composed of nine domains scored on a 1-5 scale which indicated that 1 was more informative and 5 was more pragmatic. The domains covered recruitment, setting up, delivery of intervention, flexible adherence and primary analysis.

The initial PRECIS tool3 had similar domains and an assessment scale ranging from 1 to 5. Koppenaal et. al10 devised an adaptation of this assessment, known as the Pragmascope that was simpler to use for systematic reviews. They found that pragmatic reviews scored higher across all domains, however they scored lower in the primary analysis domain.

This difference in primary analysis domains could be due to the way in which most pragmatic trials approach data. Certain explanatory trials however do not. The overall score was lower for pragmatic systematic reviews when the domains on organisation, flexible delivery, and follow-up were merged.

It is important to understand that a pragmatic trial doesn't necessarily mean a low quality trial, and there is an increasing rate of clinical trials (as defined by MEDLINE search, but this is neither sensitive nor specific) that use the term 'pragmatic' in their title or abstract. These terms may signal that there is a greater awareness of pragmatism within titles and abstracts, but it's unclear if this is reflected in content.

Conclusions

As the value of real-world evidence becomes increasingly commonplace, pragmatic trials have gained popularity in research. They are clinical trials randomized that evaluate real-world alternatives to care instead of experimental treatments under development. They involve patients that more closely mirror the patients who receive routine care, they employ comparators which exist in routine practice (e.g. existing drugs), and they depend on the self-reporting of participants about outcomes. This method can help overcome the limitations of observational studies which include the biases that arise from relying on volunteers, and the limited availability and the variability of coding in national registries.

Pragmatic trials have other advantages, such as the ability to draw on existing data sources, and a greater chance of detecting significant differences from traditional trials. However, they may still have limitations which undermine their validity and generalizability. For instance, participation rates in some trials could be lower than anticipated due to the healthy-volunteer effect as well as financial incentives or competition for participants from other research studies (e.g., industry trials). The requirement to recruit participants in a timely manner also restricts the sample size and the impact of many practical trials. Some pragmatic trials also lack controls to ensure that the observed differences aren't due to biases during the trial.

The authors of the Pragmatic Free Trial Meta identified RCTs that were published between 2022 and 2022 that self-described themselves as pragmatic. They assessed pragmatism using the PRECIS-2 tool, which includes the eligibility criteria for domains and recruitment criteria, as well as flexibility in adherence to intervention and follow-up. They discovered that 14 of these trials scored highly or pragmatic sensible (i.e. scores of 5 or higher) in any one or more of these domains, and that the majority of them were single-center.

Trials with high pragmatism scores are likely to have more criteria for eligibility than conventional RCTs. They also have populations from various hospitals. These characteristics, according to the authors, could make pragmatic trials more relevant and useful in everyday practice. However they do not guarantee that a trial will be free of bias. The pragmatism is not a fixed characteristic the test that does not possess all the characteristics of an explanatory study could still yield valuable and valid results.