This contract is to provide support for field activities on a variety of multidisciplinary epidemiologic investigations being undertaken by the Environmental Studies Section, the Nutritional Epidemiology Section, and the Office of the Chief of the Environmental Epidemiology Branch. While the scientific direction and overall supervision for all projects are the responsibility of the professional staff of the Branch, support services provided by the contract include the development of liaison with organizations and individuals at the local, national, or international level whose cooperation is needed for she conduct of a study; the design and development of forms required to conduct field investigations (interview forms, record-abstracting forms, interviewer manuals, biologic specimen collection manuals, etc.); the hiring, training, and supervision of technical personnel (interviewers, record abstractors, and persons to collect and arrange transport of biological specimens); the actual collection of the required data; the tracing of individuals, obtaining either a current address or death certificate; and the data reduction activities involved in field investigations (e.g., coding, keying, editing, and a variety of data processing activities). The contractor will also provide field supervision and develop control mechanisms to ensure the quality of activities of all aspects of each study. In some studies, the contractor will be responsible for virtually all field activities required to complete a study. This generally occurs when the study is conducted with collaborating institutions that lack the necessary field capabilities. A second manner in which the contractor will assist is by providinq only selected types of support activities that cannot be accomplished by the locally-based collaborators. Examples of this include forms development, interviewer training, random-digit dialing for control selection in areas where such activities are not often conducted, or tracing subjects for vital status using national resources. finally, the contractor may act as a coordinating center for multi-center collaborative studies. In these circumstances, in addition to providing support services, the contractor will assist in monitoring and implementing the standardized application of the study design across the different centers.
