Electronic Journal Data Collection Technologies for Interdisciplinary Research

描述(申请人提供)：当今一些最具挑战性和持久性的健康问题很可能是由随时间展开的多种风险因素之间的复杂相互作用造成的。我们建议使用跨学科方法进行研究，以完善一种新的数据收集技术，以便它可以提供研究此类问题所需的社会和行为衡量标准，并将这些衡量标准与广泛分析水平上的其他信息联系起来。我们将设计一个电子期刊工具，使用互联网和交互式语音应答(IVR)技术来收集详细的动态社会和行为衡量标准，并促进这些衡量标准与宏观、社会和微观生物分析层面的其他信息的联系。我们的目标是将这一工具的使用超越志愿者中基于临床或实验室的研究的限制，转向更广泛人群的基于概率的样本。我们的最终目标是以一种促进跨学科协作研究的方式构建和改进该工具。为了实现这一目标，该项目有四个具体目标。目的1：为了确保该工具是为最广泛的跨学科应用而设计的，我们建议在两种类型的研究人群中试验和改进电子期刊，临床人群和普通人群。目标2：我们建议设计具体的技术，利用互联网和IVR技术，使用该工具收集由广泛不同科学学科驱动的可比测量。目标3：我们建议通过激励、提醒和拒绝转换策略来确定最有效的方法来最大化合作和留住。目的4：我们建议创造一些技术，用于使用这个期刊工具，将多个层次的动态测量联系在一起，从宏观层面的社区和社会背景、家庭背景和个人经验，到微观层面的器官、细胞、分子和基因组水平。为了满足我们研究的具体目标，我们建议由一个由项目调查人员和指导委员会成员组成的跨学科团队领导一项为期四年的研究。这个团队结合了社会科学、混合方法数据收集、调查研究、神经科学、妇女健康、遗传流行病学、统计学和护理方面的专业知识。我们不同的科学家团队将在这个项目的每个阶段进行合作，以确保产生的最终产品是一个适合跨学科健康研究的数据收集工具。为了解决当今社会面临的许多复杂的健康问题，迫切需要新的数据收集方法，既能够揭示关键条件、经验和治疗随时间的动态变化，又支持综合的跨学科方法。对于这个项目，我们建议改进和测试一个电子日记工具，以帮助满足这一需求。新的互联网和电话采访技术现在使这种社会科学方法的发展成为可能，这样它就可以捕捉社会和行为动力学，将它们直接与微观层面的生物动力学指标联系起来，并将这些指标整合到针对关键健康问题和治疗的跨学科研究方法中。

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.