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Methods: Mind the Gap

Webinar Series

Design and Analysis of Studies To Evaluate Multilevel Interventions in Public Health and Medicine

October 23, 2015
Dr. David M. Murray
​David M. Murray, Ph.D.

Associate Director for Prevention
Director, Office of Disease Prevention
National Institutes of Health

View the Webinar

About the Webinar

Increasingly, interventions are designed to operate at multiple levels, including, for example, the individual, the family, the health care provider, and the larger physical and social environment. To evaluate these multilevel interventions, investigators must plan their studies to accommodate both the extra variation associated with the multiple levels of influence and the often limited degrees of freedom available to estimate those sources of variation. Group- or cluster-randomized trials have been suggested as the gold standard for evaluation of multilevel interventions, as they have the same strengths as randomized clinical trials for interventions that involve only a single level of influence. Even so, a number of other methods have been identified as alternatives.

This presentation reviews the options available to evaluate multilevel interventions and discusses their strengths and weaknesses.

About David M. Murray

Dr. Murray has spent his career evaluating intervention programs designed to improve the public health. He has worked with all age groups, in a variety of settings, and with a variety of health behaviors and disease outcomes. Beginning in the late 1980s, Dr. Murray focused on the design and analysis of group-randomized trials in which groups are randomized to conditions, and members of those groups are observed to assess the effect of an intervention. Dr. Murray wrote the first textbook on that material, published by Oxford University Press in 1998. He has worked on many of these trials, collaborating with colleagues around the country on their design, implementation, and evaluation. He has also conducted research to develop and test new methods for their design and analysis.

Dr. Murray served as the first Chair of the Community-Level Heath

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