Measurements and Methods

Training

Common Methodological Training Across HeLTI Sites

Healthy Conversation Skills

Healthy Conversation Skills (HCS) is an engagement strategy based on a social-cognitive model of health behavior, which emphasizes the role of increasing confidence in promoting behavior change (cite). Its premise is that providing individuals with knowledge alone is insufficient to change behavior unless they are also motivated and empowered to change. This approach appears more effective than comparable forms of counselling in eliciting behavior change, where even brief interventions can be effective in producing small but important changes in behavior (cite). Personnel were trained in HCS within each country by Mary Barker and/or Wendy Lawrence from the University of Southampton.

Standardized Anthropometric Measurement

Experts from the World Health Organization trained all teams on anthropometric standard operating procedures and guidelines for infants, children and adults.

Data Collection and Management

All teams use REDCap, a web-based software as the uniform electronic data capture system. The REDCap electronic case report form (eCRF) provides a common template across countries, using harmonized definitions and questionnaire items as much as possible, with adaptations to specific country needs.

Maelstrom Research, based at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI MUHC) has assisted HeLTI with methodological prospective harmonization guidelines and the data infrastructure within each country to support data management, dissemination, harmonization and co-analysis.

Maelstrom Research and the Data to Knowledge (D2K) Research Group at the University of Bristol have developed DataSHIELD, an open-source software for co-analyzing sensitive research data. Using DataSHIELD allows for individual HeLTI participant data from contributing studies to be securely held on geographically dispersed local servers.

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