Web Application and Services for Methodologically Rigorous Animal Study Design

 描述：我们在这个项目中的目标是开发一个网络应用程序来指导研究人员高效和有效地设计动物研究，以平衡最大限度地减少动物使用和提供严格、可重复的结果的相互竞争的需求。三个基本思想直接转化为我们的三个具体目标，构成了我们提议的工具的基础。首先是把科学放在统计之前：为一项试验性的、探索性的或假设驱动的研究制定科学计划，明确动物选择、安置和治疗计划的兴趣和结构的影响。其次是通过功率计算对样本量和效应量的前瞻性检验。第三，随时可以获得设计和统计专业人员的专家支持。这项拟议的研究是开发用于实验设计和分析的网络应用程序的第一阶段。我们的第一阶段工作将通过一个原型动态网络应用程序来展示这一概念，该应用程序提供定性和定量的决策支持，以及人与人之间的在线聊天功能，以快速提供研究设计的技术援助。与加州大学圣地亚哥分校和加州大学戴维斯分校的队友合作，我们将从他们丰富的动物研究经验中开发一套范例案例研究，包括研究目标和问题复杂性。从这些示例中，我们将开发用例来设计将构成软件开发基础的用户与系统的交互。

 DESCRIPTION: Our goal in this project is to develop a web-application to guide researchers in the efficient and effective design of animal studies that balance the competing needs of minimizing animal use and providing rigorous, repeatable results. Three basic ideas, which translate directly into our three specific aims, form the foundation of our proposed tool. First an foremost is to place science before statistics: develop the science plan for a pilot, exploratory o hypothesis-driven study with a clear idea of the effects of interest and structure of the animal selection, housing, and treatment plan. Second is a prospective examination of sample size and effect size through power computations. Third is ready access to expert support with design and statistics professionals. The proposed study is the first phase in the development of a web-application for experimental design and analysis. Our Phase I effort will demonstrate the concept with a prototype dynamic web application that provides qualitative and quantitative decision support together with person-to-person on-line chat capability for rapid technical assistance with study design. In collaboration with our teammates at UC San Diego and UC Davis, we will develop a set of example case studies from their extensive animal research experience, ranging both in study goals and problem complexity. From these examples, we will develop use cases to design the user-system interactions that will form the software development foundation.