6 Stratification and Randomization
In Oracle Clinical the term strata means groupings of patients that have common characteristics; they are representations of particular expressions of factors. Randomization is the process of hiding patients' treatments by assigning treatment patterns to patient positions in an unpredictable order. Patient positions represent potential study participants.
Once defined, you can use strata in any study, as needed. You can construct them by combining factors. Each factor describes a single characteristic, such as sex or age. Implementing the system's stratification utilities can minimize confounding a study's statistical results due to the uneven distribution of treatments to patients.
In this section: