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Site Glossary
Clinical Trial - An experimental study involving human subjects.
Drug Effectiveness - The change which is produced by the drug; efficacy of the drug.
Drug Side Effects - Negative changes which occur in a subject which are not related to the outcome which the drug is intended to effect.
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) - It is a consumer protection agency whose role is to promote and protect the public's health by helping safe and effective drugs reach the market in an efficient way and monitoring products for continued safety after they are approved.
Institutional Review Board (IRB) - A group of individuals whose role is to protect the rights and welfare of research subjects and to ensure their informed consent to any research for which they volunteer.
Peer Review - Before they are published in research journals, articles are reviewed by experts on the subject.
Placebo - The treatment which has the appearance of the active treatment but does not contain the ingredients which are designed to produce the positive effect.
Population - The total set of subjects which are of interest.
Questionnaire - A set of questions which is designed to obtain information about a specific topic.
Random Sample - A subset of a population chosen in such a manner that a given subject in the population has the same chance of being selected as any other subject in the population.
Randomization - Assignment of subjects to groups such that a given subject has the same chance of being assigned to a specific group as any other subject.
Randomized Clinical Trial - An experimental study involving human subjects where the subjects are randomly assigned to the treatment groups.
Research - Investigation or experimentation aimed at the discovery and interpretation of facts, revision of accepted theories or laws in the light of new facts, or practical application of such new or revised theories or laws.
Research Journal - A magazine whose articles are descriptions of research studies.
Research Question - A question which will be answered by conducting a research project.
Sample - A part of a population which is used to obtain information which will be used to help describe the total population.
Sample Size - The number of subjects which are included in a research study.
Side Effects - Negative changes which occur in a subject as a result of the treatment but which are not measured by the outcome variables which the treatment is designed to effect.
Stratified Randomization - If the subjects have some special characteristic then those that have the characteristic are randomized to the treatment groups and those that don’t have the characteristic are randomized to the treatment groups using a different randomization scheme.
Toxicity - A poisonous effect resulting from a drug.
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