Finally, to assess whether our search missed any studies that document consent rates by race or ethnicity, we evaluated the articles published for an entire year for two different types of trials. First, we reviewed all randomized controlled trials published during the 1-y period beginning April 1, 1999, in four major clinical journals: Annals of Internal Medicine, JAMA, The Lancet, and The New England Journal of Medicine. Because we wanted to assess individual patients' willingness to enroll in health research, trials were included only if they used individual patients as the unit of randomization (as opposed to hospital, region, etc.). This search identified 172 articles. We next conducted a MedLine search to identify all phase I oncology trials that used safety as an endpoint, published in English in the year 2002. This search identified 250 articles.
