Results
Of those allocated for intervention, 36 persons changed
their minds about participating. They all cited too much
stress or illness in their lives to carry through with the
programme and completely withdrew from the study. Of
those constituting the dropouts, one person died and
some had great memory problems, which meant that
they were not available for further interviews. In
addition, four persons were lost to follow-up because of
bad health and removal, which meant that a total of 40
persons dropped out (Figure 2).
Seven persons came to the group sessions 14 times or
less and discontinued their participation, although group
did not differ significantly from the others with respect
to baseline characteristics.
Of those allocated for intervention, 37 (48%) took part in
the follow-up, with the corresponding number of controls
at 55 (90%). The total number of participants who completed
the study was 92, which was much lower than what
was initially hoped for (which was 80 for each group).
Ideally, analyses of interventions should be conducted
on the basis of intention-to-treat. However, no data collection
could be carried out with the 40 participants
who were lost after the allocation and during follow up,
Bøen et al. BMC Geriatrics 2012, 12:20 Page 6 of 11
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due to their health status and withdrawal from the study.
Their reasons for withdrawal were not questioned, and it
would have been unethical to pressure them. The seven
persons who did come to the group sessions 14 times or
less (discontinued participation) were all followed up
and interviewed at 12 months, and were included in the
main analysis.
Characteristics of the study sample in the intervention
and control groups at baseline are shown in Table 1: