Public and EnvironmentalHealth Research Unit, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK.
J Epidemiol Community Health. 2012 May;66(5):391-6. doi: 10.1136/jech.2010.116483. Epub 2011 Jun 7.
Amid the calls for 'more public health evidence', we also need simple understandable methods of determining when more research really is needed. This paper describes a simple decision aid to help policymakers, researchers and other decision makers assess the potential 'information value' of a new public health randomised controlled trial.
The authors developed a flow chart to help make explicit (1) the user's information needs, (2) the intended use of the new information that the study will produce, (3) the added value of the evidence to be derived from the new study and (4) the levels of precision, bias and generalisability required by the user.
The flow chart is briefly illustrated, first in generic form and then in a worked example, showing how it may be used in deciding whether a new study should be commissioned to evaluate the health impact of allowing motorcycles to use bus lanes in London.
In this paper, the authors have presented a flow chart for enacting an informal 'Value-of-Information'-like approach to deciding when a new public health evaluation is needed. The authors do not suggest that the flow chart approach is technically the equivalent of Value-of-Information methods. Nonetheless, it represents a valuable perspective and process to adopt, and this structured approach will be more revealing than an unstructured thought experiment as the basis for decisions about a new study. To aid in its development as an effective tool, we invite users from a variety of perspectives and contexts to review it, to use it in practice and to send us their comments.
在呼吁“更多公共卫生证据”的同时，我们还需要简单易懂的方法来确定何时确实需要更多的研究。本文描述了一种简单的决策辅助工具，旨在帮助政策制定者、研究人员和其他决策者评估新的公共卫生随机对照试验的潜在“信息价值”。
作者开发了一个流程图，以帮助明确（1）用户的信息需求，（2）研究将产生的新信息的预期用途，（3）从新研究中获得的证据的附加值，以及（4）用户所需的精度、偏差和普遍性水平。
该流程图以通用形式和实际示例进行了简要说明，展示了如何在决定是否应委托进行新研究以评估伦敦允许摩托车使用公共汽车车道对健康的影响时使用该流程图。
本文作者提出了一种流程图方法来实施一种非正式的“信息价值”方法，以决定何时需要进行新的公共卫生评估。作者并不认为流程图方法在技术上等同于信息价值方法。尽管如此，它代表了一种有价值的观点和过程，这种结构化的方法将比新研究决策的无结构思维实验更具启示性。为了帮助将其发展为一种有效的工具，我们邀请来自不同视角和背景的用户对其进行审查、在实践中使用并向我们发送他们的意见。
