Methods Core

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RESEARCH METHODS CORE ABSTRACT Our Center proposes a novel deployment focused model that both streamlines behavioral interventions for late- and mid-life mood disorders and improves their delivery in the community. In response to the Center's and the field's needs, the Research Methods Core (RMC) will perform the following functions: 1. The RMC will provide operational support to the Center's new and ongoing, independently funded intervention studies to ensure the highest quality in design, procedures, and analytic strategies. 2. The RMC will develop novel methods outlined in three initiatives: Initiative 1. Analytic methods to increase the efficiency and the information yield of T2 community- based effectiveness studies. This initiative supports the Center's program of behavioral interventions with multiple outcomes and distinct behavioral targets by developing analytic approaches: 1) To maximize information on intervention outcomes reflecting meaningful dimensions of health and to reduce sample size requirements; 2) To estimate the indirect effect of longitudinal, continuous behavioral mediators of outcomes; 3) To increase the information yield of multiple repeated assessments by mobile health technology and the ability to make comparisons. Initiative 2. Approaches to integrating multiple big data sources to identify populations in need of novel interventions and deployment approaches and to policy support. This initiative responds to the Center's and the field's need to identify subgroups with mood disorders underserved by the current health care system. Accordingly, it will develop: 1) Innovative approaches for integration of heterogeneously distributed biomedical big data; 2) Methods for identifying individuals with multiple mental and physical conditions; and 3) Approaches to characterizing subgroups with poor outcomes. Combined with stakeholders' input, this information can chart directions for future community interventions.  Initiative 3: Novel approaches to integrating mobile technology in community interventions taking into account the skill sets of patients and therapists, and the resources of community settings. Mobile technology is embedded in the Center's behavioral interventions to augment information available to community clinicians and to guide them in targeting their sessions. This initiative responds to the Center's and the field's need for mobile technology accessible to older and middle-aged mental health consumers and usable at busy community treatment settings. 3. Evaluate the Center's research productivity and impact on the field. 4. Disseminate methodological advances and other Center generated resources.