The Research Center for Child Well-Being focuses on prevention and intervention research aimed at reducing risk for mental, emotional, and behavioral problems and unhealthy lifestyle behaviors in children ages 2-10. Preventive intervention outcome trials constitute a major portion of the Center?s research activities. A critical component of the Center is the Statistical and Data Management Core facility (SDM Core), which supports the Center?s research efforts and especially the early-stage investigators. Preventive intervention outcome studies, which are generally field-based rather than delivered in a laboratory or hospital setting, make substantial demands on the resources and capacities directly available to individual investigators. For the Center?s early- stage investigators in particular, the provision of data management and statistical analytic services by the SDM Core is essential in making prevention studies feasible, so that the investigators can focus all of their project resources exclusively on recruitment, intervention implementation, and data collection. The SDM Core is structured and staffed to address the many issues arising in preventive intervention outcome studies, such as power concerns, multi-level designs, moderation and mediation analyses, missing data issues, complier average causal effect to address differences in intervention adherence. The Center investigators, as well as other prevention researchers at the institution, benefit substantially from the experienced statistical and other technical personnel comprising the SDM Core.
The specific aims for the SDM Core are: (1) To establish the facilities and assemble the technical and scientific personnel necessary for high-quality statistical and data- management services pertinent to the early-stage investigators? conduct of preventive intervention clinical trials and related studies; (2) To support research projects led by the Center?s early-stage investigators, which involves provision of: (a) consultation for design and analytic planning, (b) data management services, (c) statistical programming and analysis, and (d) assistance in interpretation of analyses; (3) To provide workshop training and updates on prevention-related developments in methodology and statistics to enable Center early- career and senior scientists, as well as other prevention scientists on campus, to better understand new or complex methods; (4) To advance ways to optimize methods and applications in statistical analyses and programming, in the context of the Center?s prevention research. SDM Core support helps to enable the Center?s mission by: (a) contributing to the scientific environment conducive to early-stage investigators moving to independent research status; (b) utilizing, and keeping investigators abreast of, methodological advances pertinent to preventive intervention trials; and, (c) strengthening the institution?s capacity to meet the data-management and statistical requirements of high-quality preventive intervention trials conducted by the early-stage investigators in particular.
