Table of Contents

• Understand how opportunities and challenges in effectiveness and translational research (related to the research questions, setting, availability of resources, etc.) lead to a consideration of a variety of research designs.
   

• Recognize key tradeoffs between alternative research designs.
   

• Identify one or more useful research designs for effectiveness and translational studies.

Dates and Location 

Tuesday, May 4 – Wednesday, May 5, 2004

The Workshop was held on the NIH Main Campus in Bethesda, MD:

       Building 31C, 6th Floor, Room 10

Background

More than a year ago, a CDC and NIH planning committee was formed to consider how to organize a meeting to explore the strengths and weaknesses of various research designs for effectiveness and translational research in complex, multi-level community health interventions.  For the purposes of this initiative, community is defined broadly and includes the health care system and other sectors.

The diverse nature of the planning committee indicated that there is a broad interest in research designs for complex interventions.  The initiative was co-sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), with additional support from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), and in conjunction with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.  Its long-term objectives are:

• To build broad-based consensus as to the strengths and limitations of experimental, quasi-experimental, and natural experiment research designs for studying complex interventions, programs, or policies at the practice or community level.
   

• To encourage an enhanced understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of experimental, quasi-experimental, and natural experiment research designs in the evaluation and critique of intervention research.

Toward these ends, the format chosen for the invitational meeting was to create scenarios for which experts will have constructed two favored research designs, and during the meeting they discussed their perception of trade-offs between these designs.  The scenarios define the research question plus the nature of the intervention and its setting, target population, cost, and outcome measures.  The topics for the scenarios are: 1) prevention of Type 2 diabetes, 2) prevention of childhood obesity, 3) improving the management of asthma, 4) promotion of physical activity, 5) prevention of alcohol purchase and use among adolescents, and 6) tobacco control and cessation.

Four scenarios were presented on the first day and two were presented on the second day.  Ample discussion time was planned involving, first, the members of each working group, and second, the other meeting participants.  There was discussion time at the end of each scenario and at the end of each day.  With the help of our discussion facilitator, Tom Chapel of CDC, we looked forward to an exciting exchange of ideas.  The objective of this meeting was to have dialogue and to gather information regarding the strengths and weaknesses of various research designs using these scenarios as illustrative examples.  The purpose was not to select a design that is the "winner," but rather, to examine the trade-offs involved in choosing one design over another and to describe the situations in which a given design would be preferable.  Increasing our scientific knowledge about the effects of complex interventions will require the use of a variety of research designs.  We hope that this workshop contributed in a small way to these vital research endeavors.
 

Agenda

DAY 1: Tuesday, May 4, 2004  (Transcript of Day 1)

Speakers/Presentations

Anthony Biglan, PhD, Oregon Research Institute (large presentation; takes longer to load)
K. Stephen Brown, PhD, University of Waterloo, Canada
Ross C. Brownson, PhD, Saint Louis University School of Public Health
Carlos A. Carmargo, MD, DrPH, Harvard University
Marshall H. Chin, MD, MPH, FACP, University of Chicago
Deborah A. Cohen, MD, MPH, RAND Corporation
Thomas D. Cook, PhD, Northwestern University
Henry A. Feldman, PhD, Children's Hospital Boston
Brian R. Flay, D.Phil, University of Illinois at Chicago
Steve Gortmaker, PhD, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Harold D. Holder, PhD, Prevention Research Center at the Univ. of California, Berkeley
Robert W. Jeffery, PhD, University of Minnesota
Carol M. Mangione, MD, MSPH, University of California, Los Angeles
David Murray, PhD, University of Memphis
Mary E. Northridge, PhD, MPH, Columbia University
Rob Sanson-Fisher, PhD, University of Newcastle Australia
William R. Shadish, MS, PhD, University of California, Merced
 

A compilation of Speaker Bios is available electronically.