Tag: Methodology

The importance of an inclusive study design – the HepCAPP Study

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Dr Kirsty Roberts

 

 

by Dr Kirsty Roberts, Senior Lecturer in Trials Methodology and Deputy Research Director EDI, Bristol Medical School, University of Bristol

Background

HepCAPP (Hepatitis C Case-finding in Primary Care Pilot) was a pilot oral swab Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) screening study which was funded by NHS England in 2019 and completed in 2023. The study invited over 98,000 people aged 40-64 registered at selected GP practices to take part. 12,216 (12.4%) consented and returned their sample to the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) for testing.

The study participants found the approach to testing acceptable and the uptake was better than expected. However, the study also confirmed that those identified could have been found through lower-cost targeted screening. Therefore, we recommended that oral swab HCV screening shouldn’t be rolled out in the NHS.

Were there any groups of people or communities under-represented?

The study found … Read more

Why it’s important to pre-test patient-reported questionnaires

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Insights from testing MYMOP and PEI

Dr Mairead Murphy

 

by Dr Mairead Murphy
Senior Research Associate
Centre for Academic Primary Care

In research studies, we use patient-reported questionnaires a lot to test if healthcare interventions work or not. Given that the correct completion of these questionnaires underpins our research conclusions, it’s important to know how patients interpret them.

We decided to look more closely at how people interpreted questionnaires. We asked people who had recently visited their GP to complete two commonly-used questionnaires in primary care and tell us their thought processes as they did this. The questionnaires we chose were:

  1. The patient enablement instrument (PEI): This questionnaire has six questions, all related to how “enabled” a patient feels following a GP consultation. It asks patient to rate their improvements in coping, understanding, self-help and other aspects of “enablement”.
  2. Measure Yourself Medical Outcomes Profile (MYMOP): This questionnaire measures symptoms, daily activities
… Read more

Multimorbidity Treatment Burden Questionnaire (MTBQ) – a new measure of treatment burden

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By Dr Polly Duncan
and
Professor Chris Salisbury
Centre for Academic Primary Care
@polly_duncan
@prof_tweet

We have developed a new, simply-worded, concise questionnaire – the Multimorbidity Treatment Burden Questionnaire (MTBQ) – to measure treatment burden in patients with multimorbidity (multiple long-term conditions).

Treatment burden is the perceived effort of looking after one’s health and the impact this has on day-to-day life. It includes everything that the patient has to do to look after their health including: ordering, collecting and taking medicines; coordinating and arranging transport for, and attending, health appointments with multiple health professionals; monitoring blood sugar or blood pressure levels; learning about own health conditions; and taking on lifestyle advice.

To understand how new health care interventions impact on treatment burden, we need to be able to measure it. A recent study published in the Annals of Family Medicine highlighted treatment burden as one of the core outcome measures … Read more

Listening to the child’s voice in research on domestic violence and abuse

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LisaArai071015By Lisa Arai
Senior Research Associate
Centre for Academic Primary Care

Anybody who has worked on a systematic review will know you spend a lot of time thinking about the type of research papers to include in your review and those you will exclude. Tightly defined inclusion criteria, as well as critical appraisal, an explicit synthesis stage and measures to reduce reviewer bias (such as inter-rater checks), are what distinguish systematic from traditional reviews (a point usefully made by Mark Petticrew more than a decade ago, when he sought – among other things – to debunk the notion that systematic reviews are simply larger versions of traditional reviews).

Over many years teaching research methods, I’ve noticed students often regard this early stage of the review process as troublesome. It’s often approached with an uncertainty that, if not properly resolved, can render the review unwieldy. Or its significance might be underestimated; … Read more