Research Design, Quality of Life & Behavior Measurement

The goal of the research design service is to support prevention, cancer control, and clinical researchers in the development of psychological, behavioral, and quality of life topics as a research outcome (primary or secondary) consistent with the specific aims and hypotheses of the investigator's research. BMSR provides full consultation services to investigators wanting to develop or incorporate psychological, behavioral, or quality of life components as study outcomes. A range of services is available and selection is tailored to the investigator's needs and/or familiarity with behavioral research topics and methods.

This service also helps investigators to identify and/or use valid and reliable psychological, behavioral, and/or quality of life measures consistent with the investigators' research aims and hypotheses. A full range of consultation is available for investigators previously unfamiliar with behavioral measurement, as well as focused efforts for experienced investigators, such as members of the cancer control program.

The simplistic notion of behavioral assessment is that it is like picking a measure (a yard stick) or asking a simple question (How tall are you?) and using the data from the "tool" or item for the outcome of interest (height). However, articulating the outcome and finding the appropriate "measure" is more difficult when the focus is human behavior, cognitions, and/or emotions. To accomplish this task, the behavioral assessment service has three elements.

First, expertise is available to assist investigators, particularly those unfamiliar with behavioral measurement, to define and objectively establish what is the "behavior" to be measured. For example, "quality of life" can be operationalized in one research context to refer to hearing loss or visual impairment, yet in another, it might refer to clinical depression, or more simply, negative mood. Some investigators may not have specifically defined the ''behavior" that is uniquely appropriate for their investigation.

Second, the shared resource orients investigators to behavioral assessment methods and assessment measures, and provides OSUCCC investigators with currently available measures and methodologies, including evaluation of psychometric properties (validity, reliability) and the strengths/weaknesses of measures or methods.

Third, expertise is available regarding the formatting, scoring, and interpretation of behavioral outcome data. OSUCCC members have unlimited access to the library of currently available measures located in the shared resource office, and referral to web sites for compendia (http://www.qolid.org/ - Quality of Life Instruments Database) can be provided.

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