About the Authors

Sally Hopewell

To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: shopewell@cochrane.co.uk

Affiliations UK Cochrane Centre, Oxford, United Kingdom , Centre for Statistics in Medicine, Wolfson College, Oxford University, Oxford, United Kingdom

Mike Clarke

Affiliations UK Cochrane Centre, Oxford, United Kingdom , School of Nursing and Midwifery, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

David Moher

Affiliations Chalmers Research Group, Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute, Ottawa, Canada , Department of Epidemiology and Community Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada

Elizabeth Wager

Affiliation Sideview, Princes Risborough, United Kingdom

Philippa Middleton

Affiliation Discipline of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia

Douglas G Altman

Affiliation Centre for Statistics in Medicine, Wolfson College, Oxford University, Oxford, United Kingdom

Kenneth F Schulz

Affiliation Family Health International, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, United States of America

and the CONSORT Group

Competing Interests

All authors are involved in many initiatives in health care and healthcare research which should benefit from a wide uptake of the CONSORT for Abstracts statement.

Author Contributions

SH, MC, DM, EW, and PM were involved in the design, implementation, analysis of the study, and in writing and commenting on drafts on the final manuscript. DGA and KFS were involved in the analysis of the study and commenting on drafts on the final manuscript.