Partnerships for the Design, Conduct, and Analysis of Effectiveness, and Implementation Research: Experiences of the Prevention Science and Methodology Group

Abstract

What progress prevention research has made comes through strategic partnerships with communities and institutions that host this research, as well as professional and practice networks that facilitate the diffusion of knowledge about prevention. We discuss partnership issues related to the design, analysis, and implementation of prevention research and especially how rigorous designs, including random assignment, get resolved through a partnership between community stakeholders, institutions, and researchers. These partnerships shape not only study design, but they determine the data that can be collected and how results and new methods are disseminated. We also examine a second type of partnership to improve the implementation of effective prevention programs into practice. We draw on social networks to studying partnership formation and function. The experience of the Prevention Science and Methodology Group, which itself is a networked partnership between scientists and methodologists, is highlighted.

Reducing Cardiovascular Disparities Through Community-Engaged Implementation Research

“…92 Effective and sustainable partnerships are the result of achieving mutual self-interest, often through the process of cultural exchange. 93 Researchers need to be mindful that the failure of an implementation effort comes at a significantly greater cost to the community than to the academic partner.…”

Building a Science of Partnership-Focused Research: Forging and Sustaining Partnerships to Support Child Mental Health Prevention and Services Research

“…The paper by Brown et al (2012) summarizes some of the impressive work of the Prevention Science Methodology Group (PSMG), which serves as a model for forming close collaborations among methodologists, communities, agencies, and scientists to conduct rigorous effectiveness trials. PSMG's more recent research efforts have focused on processes that facilitate or impede quality implementation of evidence-based programs; therefore, they also summarize some novel methodologic work in implementation science related to the adoption and implementation of prevention programs.…”

A Mixed Methods Approach to Network Data Collection

“…Some indices of the overall social network, such as density, may be moderately affected by the method of collecting social network data, but it is likely that the local topology of links involving individual nodes can differ dramatically differ, as we saw from the triple in the lower left hand corner of Figure 2. Such differences may be crucial in the adoption of EBPs or the formation of partnerships that support full implementation of these methods (Brown, et al, 2012). …”