Summary
Contents
Subject index
At a time when evidence-based practice is the standard bearer for understanding health behaviour, problems and interventions, ensuring that researchers know the appropriate designs and methods for their research is more paramount than ever. Health Intervention Research will equip those doing research in these communities with the knowledge and tools they need to inform their methodological decisions when planning and conducting studies. This book describes both commonly used (e.g., randomized clinical trials) and advanced (e.g. preference trials, pragmatic trials) designs and methods for health intervention research. It outlines the theoretical reasoning underlying these different approaches, and synthesizes the evidence which supports or disputes different designs and methods. To achieve its aims, the book is divided into three main sections. The first section points to the need to base methodological decisions on evidence and highlights the importance of carefully selecting research designs and methods to maintain validity. The second section focuses on designs to determine the effects of intervention on outcomes, outlining their features and discussing how these can be used to evaluate interventions. The last section covers methods used in conducting intervention evaluation research. For each design and method, the following is covered: what it is, what the logic underlying it is, what the evidence supporting its effectiveness is, and also includes its advantages, its limitations, and how can it be implemented. This will be key reading for postgraduates and novice researchers in health and clinical psychology, health sciences and nursing.
Validity in Intervention Research
Validity in Intervention Research
The primary concern in intervention research is to generate empirical evidence for making valid inferences about the effects of the intervention on the hypothesized outcomes. The evidence should indicate that the improvement in the outcomes is attributable to the intervention, and not to any substantive or methodological factors inherent in the context of the evaluation study. In this chapter, an overview of validity is presented. Threats to validity and approaches to minimize their influence are discussed. The foundations for choosing research designs and methods for evaluating interventions are laid out.
Overview Of Validity
Validity refers to the approximate truth of inferences about the intervention effects (Shadish et al., 2002); that is, the claim that the intervention causes the outcomes is correct in that it accurately reflects reality or corresponds to the ...
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