Agency with an External Evaluator Data Management Panel, JMATE 2006

1. Agency with an External EvaluatorData Management Panel, JMATE 2006 Gillian LeichtlingRMC Research Corporation

2. Project CHOICE- Portland, OR • Effective Adolescent Treatment (EAT) grant, Cohort 1 • Treatment agency: LifeWorks Northwest • External evaluator: RMC Research Corporation

3. Secret to Success • Strong on-site liaison within the agency key to overcoming challenges of an external evaluator. • For Project CHOICE, designated follow-up interviewer fills this role, coordinating day-to-day data management tasks with evaluator/data manager.

4. Benefits of On-Site Liaison • Communicates with clinicians to help track down missing pieces of information for GRL, data problems in ABS. • Communicates with external data manager about issues needing prompt attention or the involvement of clinical supervisor or project director.

5. Project CHOICE Data Management Activities

6. Ongoing Data Collection Support • Weekly GAIN/ABS support phone conference for clinicians facilitated by data manager and GAIN trainer. • Occurs immediately after all-staff meetings • Convey reminders about current common errors • Communicate data collection/ instrument changes • Respond to staff questions and concerns

7. Ongoing Communication • Data manager sends email summary of GAIN/ABS support call reminders to GAIN team (useful for absent clinicians). • Data manager gives staff reminder of monthly data submission deadline for clinicians to get all GAINs completely entered and corrected. • On-site liaison and data manager communicate virtually daily by email. • Data manager maintains communication with IT staff (ABS administrator) about issues raised by staff.

8. Project Coordination Meetings • Data manager participates in project meetings with project director, clinical supervisor, GAIN trainer, and on-site liaison/ follow-up interviewer. • Meetings an opportunity to address problems with data flow, clinician supervision needs, and barriers.

9. GAIN Data Cleaning • Clinicians work out of 4 sites; all study packets are couriered to one central site and housed there. • Each paper GAIN is reviewed and tagged with corrections/ feedback.

10. GRL Maintenance • Clinicians send intake study packets, TxSIs, and MET-CBT completion certificates to central site. • On-site liaison enters info into GRL, following up with clinicians as needed. • On-site liaison enters follow-up info into FUL. • Data manager confers about coding choices, reviews GRL, and communicates with team about problems with data flow.

11. GPRA Data • On-site liaison prints GPRA report for each GAIN-I and GAIN-M90 completed. • Data manager picks up reports weekly for data entry. • Data manager periodically checks GAIN-I and GAIN-M90 list from ABS against GPRA website.

12. GAIN Edits from Chestnut • On-site liaison first looks at paper GAIN (often a simple data entry error) • If correction is unclear, data manager communicates with clinician by email. • Data manager makes corrections prior to data submission.

13. Monthly Data Submission Project CHOICE data manager: • Enters GAIN edits corrections. • Checks validity reports for new interviewers. • Checks correspondence between GRL and ABS cases (all GAIN-I, M90, and TxSI need to appear in both GRL and ABS). • Checks GRL for missing or inconsistent codes, dates. • Uploads zipped data and GAIN edits reply to ftp site.

14. Project CHOICE Data Submission Challenges • GAIN-I data from all clients (not just EAT evaluation participants) housed in ABS. • XOBSv field used to distinguish EAT and non-EAT clients. • Data manager filters EAT cases for export. • DM pastes exported text data into Excel and prints XPID column to compare against GRL.

15. New Challenges • Some clinicians switching to interactive GAIN, which can be more time-consuming to check. • Increased number of clinicians involved in project has increased communication challenges.

16. Contact Information • Gillian Leichtling, RMC Research • gleichtling@rmccorp.com • (503) 223-8248 x735