Participants’ understanding of a randomized controlled trial (RCT) through informed consent procedures in the RCT for breast cancer screening, J-START

Table 1 Characteristics of the study participants

		N	%
Education level	Junior high school	3	0.8
	High school	96	25.5
	Junior college*	154	41.0
	University, graduate school	105	27.9
	No reply	18	4.8
Marital status	Married, living with a partner	280	74.5
	Unmarried, widow, divorced	78	20.7
	No reply	18	4.8
Work status	Employed	308	81.9
	Unemployed	49	13.0
	No reply	19	5.1
Study allocation**	Intervention group	198	52.7
	Control group	162	43.1
	No reply	16	4.3

The mean age of the participants was 43.8 years (SD = 3.1). *Junior college includes vocational school and technical college. **Participants were randomly assigned to the intervention group (screening by mammography and ultrasound) or control group (screening only by mammography) in the Japan STrategic Anti-cancer Randomized controlled Trial (J-START).

ISSN: 1745-6215