Research Design Service North East
SUPPORT FOR PLANNING A STUDY
The two hubs of the North East Research Design Service currently work in slightly different ways.
Newcastle hub
The Newcastle hub will acknowledge receipt of your query and request that any proposals/ideas/supporting documentation and or specific questions not already received via the contact form be emailed to rds@ncl.ac.uk. Your proposal will be distributed to the First Contact Facilitators, and where appropriate the RDS Patient and Public Involvement Officer.
At Newcastle, the First Contact Facilitators meet weekly to discuss new proposals. Your proposal will then be allocated to one of three First Contact Facilitators. The Facilitator will coordinate RDS input to your proposal. The next step is to meet with the allocated Facilitator to discuss your proposal in person and consider appropriate funding streams. The Facilitator will also work with you to identify the range of advice you may require, for example from specialist advisors in statistics, health economics and qualitative research methods. Further meetings with specialist advisors will then be arranged as necessary (on occasion, specialist advisors may attend the first meeting).
Durham hub
The Durham hub will acknowledge receipt of your query and request that any proposals/ideas/supporting documentation and or specific questions not already received via the contact form be emailed to rds@durham.ac.uk . Your proposal will then be distributed to the research design service team for comment at the weekly team meeting.
The team host a weekly meeting (normally a Wednesday) to discuss proposals submitted to the RDS that week. Input is given from all members of the RDS team including a statistician, health economist, patient and public involvement officer, social care researcher and qualitative research methodologists. Feedback from this meeting will be emailed back to the investigator and he/she will be offered a meeting with appropriate RDS team members should a discussion of feedback or further development of the proposal be required. Feedback is usually provided within 24 hours of the team meeting from a member of the team who will be your 'first contact facilitator'.
Specialist support
The RDS can help to facilitate contact with it's specialist advisors who can provide expertise and knowledge on specific aspects of your proposed research. The specialist advisors are based at both the Newcastle and Durham hubs and include the following:
• Systematic Review
A systematic review is a literature review conducted to answer a research question or fully explore a particular topic. Systematic methods are used to identify relevant literature, critically appraise the literature and summarise or synthesise the findings. Searches are conducted in electronic databases such as Medline, the Cochrane Library and through manual searches of key journal articles. When feasible, a meta-analysis may be conducted where the data from included studies are synthesised and the findings reported. Alternatively, where the relevant studies are too different (for example methodologically or in groups studied) the results of the review can be reported narratively or descriptively. A systematic review may be conducted as an important first stage of a research study or as a discrete piece of research.
• Health Economics
Economic evaluation is the most common application of health economics within the RDS. An economic evaluation usually accompanies a trial to determine whether an intervention is cost-effective compared with the alternatives. This is done by investigating what resources arerequired to fund an intervention and its alternatives, any resulting resource savings in terms of reduced need for future health and personal social care as well as the benefits to the patients, their families or society as a whole.
• Qualitative Research
Qualitative research is an umbrella term for a disparate range of philosophies, approaches, practices and techniques. It generally relies on using specific research methods like interviewing, focus groups, observation, audio or videoing recording or document analysis to explore specific phenomena. Qualitative research can be used to inform intervention development of new health care interventions, inform the research design and processes, gain understanding of patients' and health and social care professionals' experiences of an issue.
• Statistics
Statistics involves the collection, organisation, and interpretation of data. It deals with all aspects of this, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments In a research study the role of statistician is to advise on the design (including the calculation of sample sizes) and to analyse and interpret numerical data. Statisticians contribute to a variety of research designs including: clinical trials, epidemiological studies, systematic reviews and pilot studies.
• Social Care
Social care refers to services provided by local authorities, private and voluntary organisations to people who for a range of social and personal reasons require care, support or protection. The main categories are services for people with mental and physical disabilities, who are mentally ill, for older people or for children at risk or in need. It used to be associated with social services departments and social workers, but is now recognised that such services have a much larger range of providers.
• Clinical Trials Unit
There are two Clinical Trials Units within this RDS region: Newcastle Clinical Trials Unit (NCTU) (UK CRC registered CTU 22) and Durham Clinical Trials Unit (DCTU). The CTUs can support the design, conduct and analysis of a broad spectrum of clinical and complex trials of health, social and educational interventions.
• Patient and Public Involvement
Patient and public involvement (PPI) is where researchers work in partnership with patients and members of the public to develop ideas for research and choose the most appropriate design and ways of carrying out the research, as well as how best to publicise the results. It is important that patients and members of the public are involved right from the start of research design. This gives the researcher the opportunity to talk to people about whether their research idea is something that is relevant and important to those it aims to benefit. Patients and the public can also contribute to applications to obtain funding for research and can make an invaluable contribution to areas such as developing study protocols, information leaflets for potential participants, helping with recruitment to studies and writing lay summaries.