The goal of the Field Core will be to support the Program by developing, testing, implementing, and monitoring all interview-related data collection activities, and by overseeing the identification of control subjects for the Program researchers. The Program's three Projects will all use the same questionnaire and the two case-control studies will have overlapping control groups, the same age range, and the same study period. Thus, centralizing the identification of controls and centralizing all interviewing and quality control procedures will result in increased efficiency and will ensure standardization of methods across Projects. Specifically, the Field Core will be responsible for the following activities: development, implementation, and monitoring of procedures for selecting potential control subjects; design and pre-testing of a uniform questionnaire; development and testing of procedures of maximizing response rates; recruitment, training, and supervision of interviewers; enrollment, interview, and collection of DNA from all study subjects; quality control; formal evaluation of the Field Core's activities; and analyses related to the quantification of non-response bias. During the preparatory phase of the Program, the Project investigators will be closely involved in the development and testing of instruments and procedures. In addition, the Project investigators will participate regularly and frequently throughout the data collection period in data monitoring and quality control activities. In this way, we will ensure that the services provided by the Core correspond fully to the Projects' requirements. In addition, the Field Core will work in close and constant complementarity with the Administrative Core, the Hospital Network Core, and the Database Management and Biostatistics Core, to ensure that the Program investigators achieve their goals in the most valid and efficient possible way. Together, the Hospital Network Core and the Field Core will organize, implement, and monitor all subject ascertainment and data collection activities for the Program. Responsibilities of the two Cores were allocated to maximize overall efficiency. Thus, the Hospital Network Core will be responsible for all tasks based at the hospitals that make up the Delaware Valley Case-Control Network while the Field Core will be responsible for all tasks that are not hospital-based. The proposed structured, in which all subject ascertainment and data collection activities are centralized in the Cores, will ensure efficiency and standardization of methods in the Projects that make up this Program, and will facilitate continuity and uniformity in any future studies that are spawned by this Program's activities.
Showing the most recent 10 out of 25 publications
