Course Objectives

The NIH Summer Institute will address essential conceptual, methodological, and practical issues involved in planning and carrying out research on the impact of social work (SW) interventions on outcomes, health behavior, and treatment. The relevance of such interventions to the NIH public health goal of improving health outcomes for persons with medical and behavioral disorders and conditions has been outlined in PA-06-082 (R03) and PA-06-083 (R21): Research on Social Work Practice and Concepts in Health.

The Institute is intended for investigators who have COMPLETED THEIR DOCTORATE and who plan to develop NIH R03 or R21 grant applications for research in this area. Faculty will include established investigators from social work and other fields. The goal is for every participant to develop an NIH R03 or R21 proposal by the end of the training that will eventually lead to a grant submission under PA-06-082 or PA-06-083: Research on Social Work Practice and Concepts in Health.

Major Topics

• Overview of conceptualizing, designing, and testing SW interventions
• Developing and submitting an NIH R03 or R21 proposal
• Measurement–selecting measures, assessing validity and reliability; measurement models and conceptual models
• Research design–importance of random assignment; sampling; group randomized designs; cluster effect multipliers; effect sizes; power
• Analysis–latent variable models, 2- and 3-level Hierarchical Linear Models (HLMs), cross-classified designs; small sample issues
• Participation will include writing draft sections on measures, methods, and analysis for an R03 or R21 application. These drafts will be evaluated by the class and critiqued in a mock study section review by social work researchers on the final day

Format: Participants will spend mornings in instructional sessions with experts in intervention research. Early afternoons will be spent working on proposals. Participants will re-convene in late afternoons to discuss issues and share their work. It is expected that participants will work on their proposals during the evening hours.

Participants are STRONGLY ENCOURAGED to bring a laptop to participate in the Summer Institute.

Cost

No fee is charged for the Summer Institute. Travel expenses, room and board, and materials will be covered by NIH.

Background

In May 2003, the National Institutes of Health developed the first trans-institute plan for social work research. This document, dubbed the NIH Plan for Social Work Research, made a series of recommendations to further enhance this area of research in the extramural program. One of the proposed initiatives was for NIH to conduct a Summer Institute on Social Work Research. This initiative would focus in 2004 on qualitative and mixed research methods and in 2005 on behavioral and social intervention research—these methodologies are frequently mentioned research infrastructure and training needs in this field.
Specifically, the NIH plan proposed to:

Develop and implement an NIH Summer Institute on Social Work Research offering new researchers intensive exposure to issues and challenges in the field of social work research. The program of the Summer Institute would include lectures, seminars, and small group discussions in research design relative to social work as it relates to health, discussion sessions on methodological approaches and interventions, and consultation on the development of research interests and advice on preparing and submitting research grant applications to the NIH.

Another of the proposed initiatives was for NIH to develop a cross-institute program announcement (PA) to encourage developmental research on social work practice and concepts in health. The PA was released on December 1, 2005, and is available at:

http://grants1.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PA-06-081.html (R01)
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PA-06-082.html (R03)
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PA-06-083.html (R21)

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