Awareness and attitude of general public about clinical trials from a developing country

Abstract

Knowledge and awareness about clinical trials amongst general public is essential to improve the recruitment rate of patients. The present study was conducted to assess such aspects in semi-urban and rural India. A cross-sectional pre-validated questionnaire based assessment of views of public regarding the various aspects of clinical trials ranging from general, ethical, confidentiality and publication was conducted. Descriptive statistics was used to represent the responses in the form of proportions. A total of 400 participants were recruited for the study and 92% of the study participants opined that clinical trials benefit society while 9.7% opined that it harms the society. Nearly three-fourth (285/336, 73.8%) considered clinical research as an essential step for the development of new drugs. Surprisingly, only 118/261 (45.2%) of the study participants felt that the confidentiality of the study participants were adequately protected. Also, only 79/247 (32%) and 86/234 (36.8%) study participants were aware of compensation in case of participation in clinical trials and adverse effects respectively. To conclude, we observed an optimistic trend towards increasing awareness about clinical trials. However, more robust studies in larger groups of individuals from various strata need to be conducted to assess the attributing factors for the difference in knowledge and awareness about clinical trials.