Statistical Methods

The clinical profiles of the participants are described by the demographic data, reported according to the level of measurement. Continuous variables are reported as the median with IQR because of the small sample size. Categorical variables are reported as frequency and percentage. Differences in the demographic data of the groups were tested using either the Mann-Whitney U test or χ² test according to the level of measurement.

For objective 1, we report the recruitment, attendance, and completion rates, and any adverse outcomes according to frequency and percentage. The VRSQ score in the intervention group is reported as the median and range.

For objective 2, we employed the Wilcoxon signed-rank test [38] to examine the within-group effects (ie, the difference in the outcomes observed between T0 and T1). We adopted this nonparametric test because the sample size was small. We also report the Z-score to represent the within-group effect size. The level of significance was judged at a threshold of .05. Intention-to-treat analysis was employed.