Having done a number of studies with small samples - such an even balance
has never happened for me by chance. The probability of such balance
occurring by chance seems slimmer than some sort of stratification strategy
being used, so I'd suggest requesting more details of the sampling
procedure - perhaps they have used minimisation or some other strategy and
ommitted reference to it in the manuscript?
regards
_______________________________________
Kath McPherson
Senior Lecturer
Department of Medicine,
Wellington School of Medicine
University of Otago
New Zealand
ph (64) 4 385-5999 (ext 6122)
fax (64)4 389-5427
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