Designing and evaluating complex interventions to improve health care

PDF WRAP_Griffiths_complex_interventions.pdf - Requires a PDF viewer. Download (215kB)

Request Changes to record.

Abstract

Complex interventions are “built up from a number of components, which may act both independently and interdependently.”1 2 Many health service activities should be considered as complex. Evaluating complex interventions can pose a considerable challenge and requires a substantial investment of time. Unless the trials illuminate processes and mechanisms they often fail to provide useful information. If the result is negative, we are left wondering whether the intervention is inherently ineffective (either because the intervention was inadequately developed or because all similar interventions are ineffective), whether it was inadequately applied or applied in an inappropriate context, or whether the trial used an inappropriate design, comparison groups or outcomes. If there is a positive effect, it can be hard to judge how the results of the trial might be applied to a different context (box 1).

Data sourced from Thomson Reuters' Web of Knowledge

Request changes or add full text files to a record

Repository staff actions (login required)

View Item