Practical Advice For Researchers Research Articles

A snapshot of consumer engagement in clinical trials in Australia: results of a national survey of clinical trial networks and research organisations

BackgroundLittle is known about the extent, perceptions or experiences of consumers involved in clinical trials across Australia. The purpose of this National study was to better understand the activity and perceptions of clinical trial networks (CTNs), research co-ordinating centres and their consumers, around consumer involvement in clinical trials.MethodsCTNs and research co-ordinating centres who were members of the Australian Clinical Trials Alliance (ACTA), and consumers involved in the activities of these organisations, were invited to participate in online surveys. Surveys were completed between April and September 2018.Results80 respondents completed the surveys in full: 25 of 34 CTNs, 5 from 15 research co-ordinating centres, and included research investigators of 13 active trials, 10 completed trials. There were 27 consumer respondents. Consumers were involved in clinical trial activities across 19/25 (76%) of CTNs and 3/5 (60%) of research co-ordinating centres. Consumers were involved at all stages of the trial cycle. Despite this, only 8/30 (27%) of research organisations provided specific training to their employees or members on consumer involvement in research, and most did not have a specific policy or process relating to conducting consumer involvement in clinical trials. At the organisation level, barriers to consumer involvement in clinical trials included being unsure how to involve consumers effectively and systematically, difficulty in accessing consumers or lack of infrastructure and resources. At the consumer level, barriers included limited understanding of their roles, a lack of resources and training. Enablers included education, training and funding for both the research sector and for consumers. Almost all consumer respondents (25/27; 92%) would recommend the consumer role to other potential consumers, stating it was a valuable experience that led to knowledge exchange and learning about the research process.ConclusionsOver the last few years, consumer involvement in clinical trials has increased in Australia, but the scope of involvement varies across different research organisations, and therapeutic areas. Consumer involvement in clinical trials is valued by most that do it, however, there are opportunities to further foster and strengthen ongoing partnerships, for example by providing practical advice for researchers on how to best engage and involve consumers.

Optimal Model Selection in RDD and Related Settings Using Placebo Zones

We propose a new model-selection algorithm for Regression Discontinuity Design, Regression Kink Design, and related IV estimators. Candidate models are assessed within a ‘placebo zone’ of the running variable, where the true effects are known to be zero. The approach yields an optimal combination of bandwidth, polynomial, and any other choice parameters. It can also inform choices between classes of models (e.g. RDD versus cohort-IV) and any other choices, such as covariates, kernel, or other weights. We use the approach to evaluate changes in Minimum Supervised Driving Hours in the Australian state of New South Wales. We also re-evaluate evidence on the effects of Head Start and Minimum Legal Drinking Age. We conclude with practical advice for researchers, including implications of treatment effect heterogeneity.

Optimal Model Selection in RDD and Related Settings Using Placebo Zones

We propose a new model-selection algorithm for Regression Discontinuity Design, Regression Kink Design, and related IV estimators. Candidate models are assessed within a ‘placebo zone’ of the running variable, where the true effects are known to be zero. The approach yields an optimal combination of bandwidth, polynomial, and any other choice parameters. It can also inform choices between classes of models (e.g. RDD versus cohort-IV) and any other choices, such as covariates, kernel, or other weights. We use the approach to evaluate changes in Minimum Supervised Driving Hours in the Australian state of New South Wales. We also re-evaluate evidence on the effects of Head Start and Minimum Legal Drinking Age. We conclude with practical advice for researchers, including implications of treatment effect heterogeneity.

Practical open science: tools and techniques for improving the reproducibility and transparency of your research

Science progresses through critical evaluation of underlying evidence and independent replication of results. However, most research findings are disseminated without access to supporting raw data, and findings are not routinely replicated. Furthermore, undisclosed flexibility in data analysis, such as incomplete reporting, unclear exclusion criteria, and optional stopping rules allow for presenting exploratory research findings using the tools of confirmatory hypothesis testing. These questionable research practices make results more publishable, though it comes at the expense of their credibility and future replicability. The Center for Open Science builds tools and encourages practices that incentivizes work that is not only good for the scientist, but also good for science. These include open source platforms to organize research, archive results, preregister analyses, and disseminate findings. This poster presents an overview of those practices and gives practical advice for researchers who want to increase the rigor of their practices.

Researching the President’s [Redacted

Presidential libraries hold a bounty of archival records, which is why National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) responses to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests constitute a vital data source. However, standard protocols impose an inferential dilemma: researchers get the released sample without much information about the broader population, making it impossible to appraise the former relative to the latter. Drawing on a large FOIA request (and successful appeal) from the George W. Bush Presidential Library, this study affords such a test. Results show NARA archivists typically withheld outwardly unimportant records—e.g., weekends, holidays, and other uneventful days—though “response set” may have occasionally affected their redact-or-withhold decisions. After demonstrating how even seemingly innocuous omissions can bias estimates of presidential behavior, the study concludes with practical advice for researchers submitting FOIA requests to presidential libraries.

Supporting evidence-based practice in speech-language pathology: A review of implementation strategies for promoting health professional behavior change

Evidence-based practice (EBP) is recognized as being essential to optimizing service provision and attaining positive client outcomes in speech-language pathology. Yet, there are a number of barriers to attaining EBP in speech-language pathology, including how to support clinicians to successfully change their practices and behaviors. Drawing from the field of implementation science, the authors describe several implementation strategies that researchers can use to facilitate the behavior of health professionals towards adopting empirically supported practices. Key studies are identified that provide practical advice for researchers on how to select and study specific implementation strategies in the service of enhancing EBP in real-world environments. An illustrative example from physical and occupational therapy illustrates how researchers might apply this advice in their own research designs. Ultimately, well-designed studies using multifaceted implementation strategies are needed to reduce the research-to-practice gap in speech-language pathology.

Not the last word: dissemination strategies for patient-centred research in nursing.

Research results hold value for many stakeholders including researchers, patient populations, advocacy organizations, and community groups. The aim of this study is to describe our research team's systematic process to designing a dissemination strategy for a completed research study. We organized a dissemination event to feed the results of our study to participants and stakeholders and collect feedback regarding our study. We applied the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's dissemination framework to guide the development of the event and collected participant feedback during the event. We describe our dissemination strategy along with attendees' feedback and suggestions for our research as an example of a way to design a patient- and community-focused dissemination. We explain the details of our dissemination strategy including (a) our process of reporting a large research study into a stakeholder event, (b) stakeholder feedback collected at the event, and (c) the translation of feedback into our research team's research. We also describe challenges encountered during the dissemination process and ways to handle issues such as logistics, funding, and staff. This analysis provides key insights and practical advice for researchers looking for innovative ways to disseminate their findings within the lay and scientific communities.

Researching Environmental Crime in Non-democratic Regimes

This article describes how one might study environmental crime in non-democratic regimes. Environmental crimes and harms are committed in both democratic and non-democratic regimes, yet in non-democratic regimes, researchers face unique methodological challenges (e.g., threats to physical integrity). Despite these challenges, studying environmental crime in autocratic regimes is a worthwhile endeavor for both students and scholars of autocratic regimes and environmental crime, as well as the overlap thereof. First, such inquiries illuminate how environmental crime provides autocratic leaders with the resources to cement their power. Second, studying environmental crime in autocratic settings encourages a reconceptualization of the meaning of environmental crime. Namely, environmental crime in autocratic regimes does not start at the law implementation stage, but already at the law-making stage. In this article, we summarize and reflect on our work on environmental crime in the Armenian mining industry (Stefes and Theodoratos in Fighting environmental crime in Europe and Abroad: the role of the EU and its member states, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2016). Much of this work relied on interviews conducted with journalists, NGO representatives, and foreign diplomats familiar with the situation in the Armenian mining sector. As we present our findings, we highlight the challenges that researchers face when tracing the institutions, actors, and their networks that facilitate environmental crime. We conclude with some practical advice for researchers who want to study environmental crime under such autocratic conditions.

Guest editorial

Purpose The purpose of this editorial is to introduce the special issue, “The Quest for Scientific Discipline in HRD Research: Designs that Support Causal Inference”. Design/methodology/approach This special issue presents seven papers that consider human resource development (HRD) research though the lens of scientific rigor, as well as techniques and considerations that researchers might use to strengthen claims of causality. Findings Based on the research reported in this special issue, it appears that the field of HRD is not necessarily distinct from educational research in the level of scientific rigor used in studies as reported in a group of HRD journals. Originality/value The seven papers provide practical advice for researchers who wish to move their research up the hierarchy of evidence and conduct rigorous research that answers “what works” questions.

Assessing trauma leader communication in an ED setting

Since pediatric trauma activations require a high level of interdisciplinary team performance, they are considered extreme action teams. Although researchers agree that effective leader communication is needed to ensure the success of this extreme action team, few instruments exist that evaluate the communication effectiveness of the leader who supervises trauma team performance during activations. To fill this void, the Assessment of Pediatric Resuscitation Communication Leader Assessment (APRC-LA) was created to assess the communication effectiveness of the formal leader during trauma activations. Accordingly, the purpose of this study is threefold. First, this study further validates the APRC-LA by reporting the inter-rater reliability results of the instrument. Second, researchers describe the design challenges that occurred throughout the validation process to illustrate the design work that goes into creating an assessment to improve an organizational process. Third, researchers provide practical advice for researchers or clinicians interested in using the APRC-LA in the future to measure the communication effectiveness of formal leaders during pediatric trauma resuscitations.

Authors, editors, and the signs, symptoms and causes of plagiarism

Plagiarism and inadequate citing appear to have reached epidemic proportions in research publication. This article discusses how plagiarism is defined and suggests some possible causes for the increase in the plagiarism disease. Most editors do not have much tolerance for text re-use with inadequate citation regardless of reasons why words are copied from other sources without correct attribution. However, there is now some awareness that re-use of words in research articles to improve the writing or “the English” (which has become a common practice) should be distinguished from intentional deceit for the purpose of stealing other authors’ ideas (which appears to remain a very rare practice). Although it has become almost as easy for editors to detect duplicate text as it is for authors to re-use text from other sources, editors often fail to consider the reasons why researchers resort to this strategy, and tend to consider any text duplication as a symptom of serious misconduct. As a result, some authors may be stigmatized unfairly by being labeled as plagiarists. The article concludes with practical advice for researchers on how to improve their writing and citing skills and thus avoid accusations of plagiarism.

Sham Acupuncture Devices – Practical Advice for Researchers

Several validated sham acupuncture devices have recently become available. While some debate exists on whether such needles are the best placebo control for an RCT of acupuncture, practical advice based on research experience is missing from the literature. This paper shares our concrete experience using the most commonly used such sham needle (the 'Streitberger needle' and its paired verum needle) in a large RCT (n=135) which included a two-week run-in period. The placebo run-in gave us an opportunity to use the sham device on all participants, who were then re-randomised to receive genuine acupuncture or to continue treatment with the device. The blinding was successful both at the end of the run-in and at the conclusion of the trial despite the re-randomisation. We also report our experience with the sham needle in neuroimaging experiments where the magnetic machinery poses considerable challenges for acupuncture research.

Applying Web-Based Survey Design Standards

Web-based surveys are used as research tools in a wide range of disciplines. Web-based surveys present a unique set of challenges concerning survey design, not known in previous survey modes. The flexibility of screen design allows for Web-based surveys to take on many appearances, some having a negative impact on data quality. In this article, we propose and illustrate several Web-based survey design standards developed by researchers based on several projects involving Web-based surveys. These standards have been developed from theory and practice and should provide practical advice for researchers and a platform for future research in Web-based survey design.