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Intervention Development

 Edited by: Prof Pat Hoddinott

A thematic series published in Pilot and Feasibility Studies.

Intervention development is the crucial first step before formal feasibility and pilot testing, in preparation for conducting a large-scale definitive trial or observational study. It is increasingly recognized that careful attention to the methods used in development will increase the chance of interventions being effective within trials, and being adopted widely in the real world. However, this initial phase is seldom reported in detail and may overlap with assessment of acceptability and feasibility.

This exciting collection covers the systematic and rigorous processes involved when developing complex interventions. It will provide a focus for discussion, for researchers to learn from each other and to encourage scientific rigor in reporting the early phases of complex intervention design.

  1. The aim of this paper is to showcase best practice in intervention development by illustrating a systematic, iterative, person-based approach to optimising intervention acceptability and feasibility, as applie...

    Authors: Holly Victoria Rose Sugg, David A. Richards and Julia Frost
    Citation: Pilot and Feasibility Studies 2017 3:37
  2. Patients who experience a cardiac event are at higher risk of developing depression than the general population. Despite this, cardiac rehabilitation (CR) programmes do not provide a systematic approach to psy...

    Authors: Rachel Winder, Suzanne H. Richards, John L. Campbell, David A. Richards, Chris Dickens, Manish Gandhi, Christine Wright and Katrina Turner
    Citation: Pilot and Feasibility Studies 2017 3:9
  3. The global incidence of type 1 diabetes is rising, and youths with type 1 diabetes continue to suffer poorer health than peers without diabetes. Evidence suggests youths with type 1 diabetes have physical acti...

    Authors: Fiona Mitchell, Alison Kirk, Kenneth Robertson and John J. Reilly
    Citation: Pilot and Feasibility Studies 2016 2:66
  4. Visualisation techniques are used in a range of healthcare interventions. However, these frequently lack a coherent rationale or clear theoretical basis. This lack of definition and explicit targeting of the u...

    Authors: Jennifer Murray, Brian Williams, Gaylor Hoskins, Silje Skar, John McGhee, Shaun Treweek, Falko F. Sniehotta, Aziz Sheikh, Gordon Brown, Suzanne Hagen, Linda Cameron, Claire Jones and Dylan Gauld
    Citation: Pilot and Feasibility Studies 2016 2:46
  5. We aimed to establish the support needs of people with heart failure and their caregivers and develop an intervention to improve their health-related quality of life.

    Authors: Colin J. Greaves, Jennifer Wingham, Carolyn Deighan, Patrick Doherty, Jennifer Elliott, Wendy Armitage, Michelle Clark, Jackie Austin, Charles Abraham, Julia Frost, Sally Singh, Kate Jolly, Kevin Paul, Louise Taylor, Sarah Buckingham, Russell Davis…
    Citation: Pilot and Feasibility Studies 2016 2:37
  6. Obesity is commonly seen in the Australian general practice population; however, few resources are specifically targeted at GPs working with these patients. The National Health and Medical Research Council (Au...

    Authors: Elizabeth Ann Sturgiss and Kirsty Douglas
    Citation: Pilot and Feasibility Studies 2016 2:20
  7. Many complex intervention trials fail to show an intervention effect. Although this may be due to genuine ineffectiveness, it may also be the result of sub-optimal intervention design, implementation failure o...

    Authors: Sara Levati, Pauline Campbell, Rachael Frost, Nadine Dougall, Mary Wells, Cam Donaldson and Suzanne Hagen
    Citation: Pilot and Feasibility Studies 2016 2:17
  8. This paper provides three illustrations of how the “person-based approach” can be used to assess and enhance the acceptability and feasibility of an intervention during the early stages of development and eval...

    Authors: Lucy Yardley, Ben Ainsworth, Emily Arden-Close and Ingrid Muller
    Citation: Pilot and Feasibility Studies 2015 1:37
  9. This editorial introduces a new special series on intervention development in the on-line open access journal Pilot and Feasibility Studies. An intervention development study reports the rationale, decision-makin...

    Authors: Pat Hoddinott
    Citation: Pilot and Feasibility Studies 2015 1:36