Random Allocation (Randomization)
A process involving chance used in therapeutic trials or other research endeavor for allocating experimental subjects, human or animal, between treatment and control groups, or among treatment groups. It may also apply to experiments on inanimate objects.
More to read: Testing Treatments, Randomized Control Trial
Click to enlargeRandom allocation for patients in a clinical trial with two groups CONSORT
About Random Allocation in Clinical Trials
In the late 1940s, groups of researchers in Europe and the USA led one of the most important developments of modern medical science: they refined the methods for testing treatments in randomized controlled studies or “trials.”
“Randomized” means that volunteers are divided into groups by chance, like in a lottery. One of the groups then uses the treatment being tested. The experiences of the other group of people provide control or comparison data. This makes it possible to see what effects the treatment actually has, and to make sure that the groups are not different from the start — for example, because one group has healthier people in it. This simple approach provides a way to find out if a treatment is effective, useless or even harmful.
It soon became clear just how important these scientific techniques were. The first modern trial of a medicine began in England in 1948 when a drug was tested for the treatment of tuberculosis, a life-threatening chronic lung disease. Read more about why randomized trials are important Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG)