An Integrative Approach to Control Group Creation for Prevention Research

 描述（由申请人提供）： 这个SBIR项目的目标是开发一种方法来创建算法生成的控制组。这些将由具有两个特征的合成病例组成：（1）与任何预防治疗组可能存在的预试验相似性，以及（2）随时间推移的变化模式，这些变化模式密切模仿酒精和药物使用发展的正常过程。酒精和毒品预防领域已经非常成熟，拥有丰富的数据资源，可用于这一目的。值得注意的是，许多学校和社区效能研究在随机对照试验中采用了对照组。其他病因学和流行病学研究也收集了类似的数据。鉴于可供分析的数据量很大，现在有可能对青少年开始使用酒精和毒品的情况建立模型。我们建议从以前的研究中收集数据，并开发可用于预测酒精和药物使用的统计模型。将开发一种算法，该算法将创建综合对照病例，以匹配治疗组的人口统计学和预测试中介变量评分，然后估计未来的药物使用。这种方法的几个好处是预期的。酒精和药物预防研究人员和从业人员将能够使用这种方法来测试传播的干预措施的有效性，并迅速评估新的和替代预防干预措施的潜力。具体来说，这种方法将提供一种方法来评估酒精和药物预防计划的有效性，这些计划在随机化无法发生时传播。这种方法也将使评估新的和适应的程序更容易通过减少招聘的挑战，主题保留，现场数据收集和预测试不等价时，经常发生l教室，学校和社区被分配到条件。

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The goal of this SBIR project is to develop a method for creating algorithmically generated control groups. These will be composed of synthetic cases that have two characteristics: (1) pretest similarity to whatever prevention treatment group may present itself and (2) patterns of change over time that closely mimic the normal course of alcohol and drug use development. The field of alcohol and drug prevention is one that has significantly matured and has rich data resources that can be employed to this end. Notably, numerous school and community efficacy studies have employed control groups in randomized control trials. Additional etiological and epidemiological studies have collected similar data. Given the large amount of data available for analysis, it is now possible to model the onset of alcohol and drug use among adolescents. We propose to gather data from previous studies and develop statistical models that can be used to predict the onset of alcohol and drug use. An algorithm will be developed that will create integrative control cases to match to a treatment group's demographics and pretest mediating variable scores and then estimate future drug use. Several benefits of this method are anticipated. Alcohol and drug prevention researchers and practitioners will be able to use this approach to test the effectiveness of disseminated interventions and to quickly evaluate the potential of new and alternative prevention interventions. Specifically, this method will provide a means to evaluate the effectiveness of alcohol and drug prevention programs that are disseminated when randomization cannot occur. This method will also make evaluating new and adapted programs easier by reducing the challenges of recruitment, subject retention, and onsite data collection and pretest non-equivalence that often occur when l classrooms, schools and communities are assigned to condition.