The key aim of this study focuses on dementia care and services, and is to establish an agreed standardised set of outcomes that should be included and measured when evaluating interventions or trials, as completed and on-going Cochrane reviews of interventions for people with dementia indicate a high degree of variation in outcome measures, with limited consistency between studies, leading to marked heterogeneity reporting biases. These hinder comparison of findings and meta-analysis and make interpretation of results difficult. The development of a standard core outcome set for dementia interventions/trials is one method proposed to address these issues with a focus on people with dementia living in the community. We also intend to involve a range of stakeholders including people with dementia, carers, healthcare professionals and policy makers to have their perspectives on what outcomes are important and meaningful.
Protocol: https://trialsjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13063-018-2584-9
Principal investigator: Dr Siobhan Reilly, Lancaster University
Affiliations:
Andrew Harding, Lancaster University
Dr Hazel Morbey, Lancaster University
Faraz Ahmed, Lancaster University
Dr Iracema Leroi, University of Manchester
Professor Paula Williamson, University of Liverpool
Professor John Keady, University of Manchester
Professor Lara-Christer Hyden, Link?ping University
Dr Caroline Swarbrick, University of Manchester
Dr David Reeves, University of Manchester
Professor Alistair Burns, University of Manchester
Professor Linda Davies, University of Manchester
Professor David Challis, University of Manchester
Disease Category: Neurology
Disease Name: Dementia
Age Range: Unknown
Sex: Either
Nature of Intervention:
- Clinical experts
- Consumers (caregivers)
- Consumers (patients)
- Policy makers
- COS for clinical trials or clinical research
- Recommendations for outcome measures (measurement/how)
- Delphi process
- Focus group(s)
- Literature review
- Survey
- Systematic review
Study design uses COMET guidance and includes a rigorous 4-phase study design of:
Phase 1: Focus group + literature review
Focus groups involve key stakeholder to identify outcomes that are important for dementia care and services in the community.
Reviewing evidence to identify outcomes that reported in current interventions/trials for dementia care.
Phase 2: Delphi Survey
A series of Delphi surveys to reduce the range of potential outcomes, and to reach consensus on the list of outcomes included in the core set.
Phase 3: Systematic review
A systematic review to identify and assess instrument/tools that are used to measure identified outcome in the core set.
Phase 4: Stated Preference survey
Stated preference survey to elicit the preference of key stakeholders for different types of outcomes identified in the core outcome set.