In the November 15, 2010 edition of Clinical Cancer Research, Cheng and colleagues describe an important finding, namely, the association between trial development time and accrual success (1). Their article also reports accrual success rates for NCI Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program (CTEP)-sponsored trials. This publication formally publishes the finding that 40% of cancer clinical trials of a...

PURPOSE The need to increase the number oncology clinical trials with sufficient enrollments is a well-known issue, particularly for trials targeting therapeutic applications. It is critical to identify early predictors of eventual study accrual achievement. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN All nonpediatric phase I, I/II, II, and III therapeutic studies supported by the National Cancer Institute Cancer Th...

Prior accounting research argues that diminishing marginal returns on new investments drive lower persistence of accruals relative to cash flows. Macroeconomic research documents that marginal profitability is counter-cyclical, which implies that diminishing marginal returns on new investments are more pronounced during periods of expansions than recessions. Linking the cyclicality of diminishi...

BACKGROUND Many cancer interventional clinical trials are not completed because the required number of eligible patients are not enrolled. OBJECTIVE To assess the value of using a research data mart (RDM) during the design of cancer clinical trials as a predictor of potential patient accrual, so that less trials fail to meet enrollment requirements. MATERIALS AND METHODS The eligibility cri...

Interpreting accruals as working capital investment, we hypothesize based on q-theory that firms optimally adjust their accruals in response to discount rate changes. A higher discount rate means less profitable investments and lower accruals, and a lower discount rate means more profitable investments and higher accruals. Our evidence supports this optimal investment hypothesis: (1) adding an ...

BACKGROUND Adequate participant recruitment is vital to the conduct of a clinical trial. Projected recruitment rates are often over-estimated, and the time to recruit the target population (accrual period) is often under-estimated. METHODS This report illustrates three approaches to estimating the accrual period and applies the methods to a multi-center, randomized, placebo controlled trial u...

This paper develops a measure of income tax expense accrual quality. Following the framework of Dechow and Dichev (2002), we examine the extent to which the financial statement accrual for book tax expense maps into tax-related cash flows. We argue that the quality of a firm’s tax accrual is decreasing in the magnitude of estimation error associated with the accrual, and that tax accrual qualit...

Australian governments have recently moved from cash accounting to accrual accounting. In doing so they have made simultaneous use of two rival accrual accounting frameworks: AAS 31 and GFS. AAS 31 and GFS operating result measures differ significantly. To date, the AAS 31 framework has enjoyed primacy. This paper evaluates these two frameworks, and suggests that GFS is superior. Accrual accoun...

BACKGROUND Subject recruitment for medical research is challenging. Slow patient accrual leads to increased costs and delays in treatment advances. Researchers need reliable tools to manage and predict the accrual rate. The previously developed Bayesian method integrates researchers' experience on former trials and data from an ongoing study, providing a reliable prediction of accrual rate for ...

Investigators need good statistical tools for the initial planning and for the ongoing monitoring of clinical trials. In particular, they need to carefully consider the accrual rate-how rapidly patients are being recruited into the clinical trial. A slow accrual decreases the likelihood that the research will provide results at the end of the trial with sufficient precision (or power) to make m...