Medical researchers evaluate their methodological skills

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE. Clinical epidemiology and statistics skills of clinical researchers are often limited. We assessed methodological skills of medical researchers and identified factors associated with higher skill levels. METHODS. In a cross-sectional mail survey at two Swiss teaching hospitals, participants (N = 409) rated their ability to perform 26 research-related activities, such as identifying the research question, selecting a study design, computing the required sample size, performing data analysis, and reporting results. RESULTS. The proportion of respondents who were able to perform a specific activity was 33.2% on average, ranging from 1.5% for "numerical statistics (bootstrap, simulation, cross-validation,...)" to 76.0% for "oral presentation of results." The overall skill level (expressed as a percentage of the 26 activities) was associated with principal investigator experience (+8.7%), greater percentage of time devoted to research (+12.4% for near full-time versus no time commitment), years of research experience (+17.6% for 15-40 years versus 0 years), past number of clinical research projects (+18.0% for 15-230 projects versus 0-1 projects), and hours of formal methodological training (+32.6% for 200-1200 hours versus 0-9 hours). CONCLUSION. Self-reported methodological skills were generally modest. The most important covariates of skill levels were current time commitment to research, past experience, and formal training. [Authors]]]> Research Personnel ; Research ; Epidemiologic Methods oai:serval.unil.ch:BIB_6335956DD1E6 2023-07-29T01:26:15Z <oai_dc:dc xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:oai_dc="http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/2.0/oai_dc/" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/2.0/oai_dc/ http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/2.0/oai_dc.xsd"> https://serval.unil.ch/notice/serval:BIB_6335956DD1E6 Validation of the Addiction Severity Index in French-speaking alcoholic patients. info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/pmid/8913988 Daeppen, J.B. Burnand, B. Schnyder, C. Bonjour, M. Pécoud, A. Yersin, B. info:eu-repo/semantics/article article 1996 Journal of Studies On Alcohol, vol. 57, no. 6, pp. 585-590 info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/pissn/0096-882X urn:issn:0096-882X <![CDATA[OBJECTIVE: Evaluation of a French translation of the Addiction Severity Index (ASI) in 100 (78 male) alcoholic patients. METHOD: Validity of the instrument was assessed by measuring test-retest and interrater reliability, internal consistency and convergence and discrimination between items and scales. Concurrent validity was assessed by comparing the scores from the ASI with those obtained from three other clinimetric instruments. RESULTS: Test-retest reliability of ASI scores (after a 10-day interval) was good (r = 0.63 to r = 0.95). Interrater reliability was evaluated using six video recordings of patient interviews. Severity ratings assigned by six rates were significantly different (p &lt; .05), but 72% of the ratings assigned by those who viewed the videos were within two points of the interviewer's severity ratings. Cronbach alpha coefficient of internal consistency varied from 0.58 to 0.81 across scales. The average item-to-scale convergent validity (r value) was 0.49 (range 0.0 to 0.84) for composite scores and 0.35 (range 0.00 to 0.68) for severity ratings, whereas discriminant validity was 0.11 on average (range-0.19 to 0.46) for composite scores and 0.12 (range-0.20 to 0.52) for severity ratings. Finally, concurrent validity with the following instruments was assessed: Severity of Alcoholism Dependence Questionnaire (40% shared variance with ASI alcohol scale), Michigan Alcoholism Screening Test (2% shared variance with ASI alcohol scale) and Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (31% shared variance with ASI psychiatric scale). CONCLUSIONS: The Addiction Severity Index covers a large scope of problems encountered among alcoholics and quantifies need for treatment. This French version presents acceptable criteria of reliability and validity