Electronic Journal Data Collection Technologies for Interdisciplinary Research

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Some of the most challenging and persistent health problems today are likely caused by complex interactions among multiple risk factors unfolding across time. We propose research using an interdisciplinary approach to refine a new data collection technology so it may provide the social and behavioral measures needed to study such problems and link those measures to other information across a wide range of analytic levels. We will design an electronic journal tool that uses the Internet and Interactive Voice Response (IVR) technologies to collect detailed dynamic social and behavioral measures and facilitates the linking of those measures to other information across the macro social and micro biological levels of analysis. We aim to move the use of this tool beyond the limits of clinic- or lab-based studies among volunteers, to probability-based samples of the broader population. Our ultimate goal is to construct and refine the tool in a way to promote interdisciplinary collaborative research. To accomplish this, the project has four specific aims. Aim 1: To assure the tool is designed for the broadest possible interdisciplinary applications, we propose to pilot and refine the electronic journal across two types of study populations, a clinical population and the general population. Aim 2: We propose to design specific techniques for using the tool to collect comparable measures motivated by a wide range of different scientific disciplines using Internet and IVR technologies. Aim 3: We propose to determine the most efficient methods of maximizing cooperation and retention via incentives, reminders, and refusal conversion strategies. Aim 4: We propose to create techniques for using this journal tool to link together dynamic measures across multiple levels of analysis, spanning from community and social context, family context, and individual experience at the macro-level to the organ, cellular, molecular, and genomic levels at the micro level. To meet the specific aims of our research, we propose a four-year study led by an interdisciplinary team of project investigators and steering committee members. This team combines expertise in social science, mixed method data collection, survey research, neuroscience, women's health, genetic epidemiology, statistics, and nursing. Our diverse team of scientists will collaborate on every phase of this project to insure the final product produced is a data collection tool that befits interdisciplinary health research. To address many of the complex health problems society faces today, there is an urgent need for new data collection methods which are able to both reveal dynamics over time in key conditions, experiences, and treatments and support integrated, interdisciplinary approaches. For this project, we propose to refine and test an electronic journal tool to help meet this need. New internet and telephone interviewing technologies now make it possible to advance this social science method so it can capture social and behavioral dynamics, link them directly to measures of micro-level biological dynamics, and integrate these measures into an interdisciplinary research approach targeted at key health problems and treatments.