About the Authors

Sandra M. Eldridge

s.eldridge@qmul.ac.uk

Affiliation Centre for Primary Care and Public Health, Queen Mary University of London, London, United Kingdom

Gillian A. Lancaster

Affiliation Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Lancaster University, Lancaster, Lancashire, United Kingdom

Michael J. Campbell

Affiliation School of Health and Related Research, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, United Kingdom

Lehana Thabane

Affiliation Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

Sally Hopewell

Affiliation Nuffield Department of Orthopaedics, Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom

Claire L. Coleman

Affiliation Centre for Primary Care and Public Health, Queen Mary University of London, London, United Kingdom

Christine M. Bond

Affiliation Centre of Academic Primary Care, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, Scotland, United Kingdom

Competing Interests

All authors have completed the ICMJE disclosure form at http://www.icmje.org/coi_disclosure.pdf and declare support from the following organisations that might have an interest in the submitted work – Queen Mary University of London, Sheffield University, NIHR, Chief Scientist Office Scotland; financial relationships with NIHR, MRC, EC FP7, Canadian Institute for Health Research, Wiley, who might have an interest in the submitted work in the previous three years. No other relationships or activities have influenced the submitted work. This does not alter the authors' adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: SE GL MC LT SH CB. Performed the experiments: SE GL MC LT SH CB CC. Analyzed the data: SE GL MC LT SH CB CC. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: SE GL MC LT SH CB. Wrote the paper: SE GL MC LT SH CB CC.