Paper
Saturday, November 3, 2007
659
Key Strategies for Designing and Minimizing Threats to Internal Validity
Bernadette Mazurek Melnyk, PhD, RN, CPNP, FAAN, Arizona State University College of Nursing & Healthcare Innovation, Phoenix, AZ, USA
This presentation will focus on key strategies for designing intervention studies and minimizing threats to internal validity, which is the ability to support that it was the intervention that resulted in a change in outcomes, not other confounding variables. The benefits of designing randomized controlled trials versus other types of intervention studies will be discussed. Major threats to internal validity that will be described include: a) attrition, b) confounding variables, c) non-adherence to the intervention protocol, d) instrumentation, e) history, f) maturation, and g) testing. Strategies to minimize these threats in the conduct of intervention trials will be highlighted.