CT.gov Enrollment-Size Gap
2026-03-29 | full-registry ct.gov audit | plots, figures, and e156 bundle
Series
Enrollment Project

Are smaller registered trials much quieter on CT.gov?

A standalone public project on how enrollment size maps onto missing results, ghost protocols, and the visibility gap between small and large older studies.

1-50: 73.2%
1001-5000: 62.4%
Ghosts 47.6%
Large OTHER 81.5%

Project

This page borrows the cohort-taxonomy logic from your small-sample methods work and applies it to CT.gov: not effect heterogeneity, but visibility heterogeneity by recorded trial scale.

Small registered studies remain far quieter than larger trials, but size does not fully rescue the biggest sponsor-class backlogs.

Enrollment-size comparison

A standalone E156 project on how enrollment size maps onto older-study visibility, ghost protocols, and sponsor-class contrasts.

1-50 studies
113,421
Smallest common bucket
1-50 no results
73.2%
2-year no-results
1001-5000 no results
62.4%
Large-study benchmark
1001-5000 ghosts
18.7%
Ghost-protocol rate
No-results by size
ENROLLMENT-SIZE BUCKETS2-year no-results rate by recorded enrollment size1-5073.2%51-10075.7%101-50067.3%501-100057.1%1001-500062.4%5001+68.8%
The main size gradient runs downward as trials get larger, though the largest bucket does not fully flatten the problem.
Size behaves like a visibility axis here, similar to how small-k analyses expose instability in your other methods projects.
Read Across Projects

Across The Series

The split projects are meant to be read together because each isolates a different dimension of registry opacity rather than forcing every question into one leaderboard.

Industry
CT.gov Industry Disclosure Gap

Industry-focused missing-results stock, sponsor backlogs, and structural sparsity inside CT.gov.

Sponsor Classes
CT.gov Sponsor-Class Hiddenness

Sponsor-class comparisons on rate, stock, and structural hiddenness rather than one flattened ranking.

Phases
CT.gov Phase Reporting Gap

Phase-by-phase disclosure gaps showing how silence changes along the development pathway.

Structural
CT.gov Structural Missingness

Field-level missingness across publication links, IPD statements, descriptions, and locations.

Visibility
CT.gov Evidence Visibility Gap

Results-plus-publication visibility states showing how many older trials are fully visible, partly visible, or ghosted.

Cohorts
CT.gov Completion Cohort Debt

Completion-era reporting debt showing how older eligible cohorts drift on no-results and ghost-protocol rates.

Conditions
CT.gov Condition Hiddenness Map

Keyword-classified therapeutic-area hiddenness mapping across common condition families.

Concentration
CT.gov Sponsor Backlog Concentration

Concentration and inequality analysis showing how much unresolved stock sits inside a thin sponsor slice.

Rule Eras
CT.gov Rule-Era Reporting Gap

Policy-era comparisons across pre-FDAAA, FDAAA, and later CT.gov completion cohorts.

PubMed Audit
CT.gov Publication Undercount Audit

Sample-based external PubMed NCT audit testing how often CT.gov no-link records hide an external paper trail.

Oncology
CT.gov Oncology Hiddenness

Oncology-specific CT.gov hiddenness showing where cancer-trial stock, phases, and sponsors still go quiet.

Cardiovascular
CT.gov Cardiovascular Hiddenness

Cardiovascular CT.gov hiddenness showing how heart and vascular studies remain quiet across major phases and sponsors.

Metabolic
CT.gov Metabolic Hiddenness

Metabolic CT.gov hiddenness across obesity, diabetes, and related trial portfolios with large late-phase and NA stock.

Geography
CT.gov Geography-Scale Visibility

Site and country footprint analysis showing how larger trial geographies map onto much better public visibility.

Purpose
CT.gov Design-Purpose Hiddenness

Primary-purpose and allocation analysis showing which trial intents remain most obscured on CT.gov.

Delay
CT.gov Completion-Delay Debt

Registration-to-completion delay analysis showing short-cycle studies carry the heaviest reporting debt.

Architecture
CT.gov Trial-Architecture Gap

Arm-count and intervention-count analysis showing simpler trial architectures are often the quietest.