Sunday, 29 October 2017: 3:05 PM
Successful fundable research today often requires a multisite study approach to gain the participant numbers required for generalizability. However, large multisite educational studies remain relatively rare and there are few publications available for guidance in planning or conducting such a study. The PI and project manager have worked together on 2 large multisite studies over the past 8 years involving 20 sites. We will share our experiences managing these studies over this time. Our current CPR study includes 2 site coordinators from a previous study and 8 new sites and coordinators. We apply several of Weiner’s (2009) organizational change theory concepts as a framework for presenting lessons learned after managing these large multi-site studies. We have arranged our remarks around Weiner’s key theoretical concepts: developing a shared sense of readiness, implementation capabilities, and long term organizational outcomes results from the studies. Examples of developing a shared sense of readiness included: using Google hangout on Air to archive all meetings and touching base with organizational leadership as problems were identified that site coordinators could not manage. Examples of implementation activities included: using the same ID as PW and sign in, detailed color coded cueing sheets for running a participant through the study protocol and meetings for strategic planning for recruiting students, dealing with changing study faculty members, changes in IRBs and forms used, scheduling to participants in various ways, getting participants to return, dealing with software or manikin issues, role confusion issues from the IRB paperwork. We were able to meet for a study dinner at a major simulation conference each year of the study, our only face to face meetings during the study. Examples of long term organizational outcomes include asking our novice research site coordinators to present and write manuscripts with us. We hope that we have engendered a spirit of inquiry, a love for research, and fearlessness in our new site coordinators to take on other large scale research projects, and to perhaps continue their educations.