In my RCT, one of the exclusion criteria included the following: "Participants did not complete more than two modules." Is this related to the intent-to-treat principles, the gold standard for RCTs, or could we use it even if the study design doesn't adhere to intent-to-treat principles?
If the exclusion is based on something that happens to participants after randomization, such as not completing the intended course of study, you should retain them in the study for an intention to treat analysis. You can do an RCT without using intention-to-treat analysis but if there are a substantial number of dropouts related to treatment compliance (or similar) your randomly formed groups rapidly become non-random because of something that may be related to your treatment. It introduces bias because the processes leading to dropout will be different in the control group. You must at least acknowledge this limitation and consider the implications.
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