Evaluating the evidence of effectiveness for preventive interventions: Using a registry system to influence policy through science
Section snippets
Methods
This article uses a recent bibliography of preventive trials for children below the age of 6 that specifically target the prevention of behavioral, emotional, or social problems through behavioral, psychosocial, or educational preventive interventions (Mrazek & Brown, 1998). Funded by the Invest in Kids Foundation, this project used a three-stage process for identifying relevant trials. Inclusion criteria included all trials that targeted one of the following areas: (1) interventions that were
Description of the trials
A total of 214 relevant scientific papers were obtained at the end of the three stages of screening, and they were based on 167 separate trials. All but one of the 214 reports discussed a single preventive trial. The lone exception involved two closely related interventions that were tested with separate random assignments.
The Cochrane score can be used as a benchmark to compare the design quality of one set of trials in one field against another. Scores below 7 are typically considered of low
Conclusions
We have focused on two important aspects of the scientific literature on prevention: the quality of the trial design and the strength of the outcomes. Both appear to be quantifiable and therefore it should be possible to summarize this information for policy makers and others who need to be informed about prevention science. This statement by itself is important since there have been disagreements about the possibility that design quality could be quantified appropriately. This project
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Drs. Patricia Mrazek, Clemens Hosman, William Bukoski, Ellen Sogolow, Sheppard Kellam, and Tony Biglan for many helpful discussions on the uses of a registry system in prevention to inform policy. In addition, we thank the advisory board of the International Classification of Preventive Trials for their guidance in helping to organize the literature on prevention. Some of these ideas have directly influenced this paper, other ideas have provided a foundation for the
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