Designing web surveys

This 4-hour course will be offered via Zoom. Attendance is required as the course will not be recorded.

Please Note: At this time, registrants will be limited to Certificate of Survey Science students, UNC Chapel Hill members, Raleigh/Durham-area university members, and RTI International employees. RTI employees will receive a separate registration link for the course, upon approval. If you do not meet the above criteria, your registration will be cancelled. You will be able to re-register if there are spots available when we open this to all.

Course Summary:

This course will provide an introduction to effectively designing web surveys to avoid common pitfalls that impact data quality and introduce measurement error. The course will focus on the following elements of web survey design – overall formatting and visual layout of screens, selecting and designing questions and response options (e.g., radio buttons, check boxes, grids, and open text fields), error and validation messaging, navigation elements, and usability. Special considerations for designing web surveys to accommodate mobile response will also be covered. This course will also provide an overview of the various web survey software systems available and offer practical guidance on selecting appropriate platforms. However, this course will not provide instruction on the technical aspects of web survey programming or introduce programming languages. The course will draw from empirical literature on best practices coupled with practical considerations when designing and implementing web surveys.

This course will count as 4.0 CSS short course credit hours.

Instructor: Amanda Smith

Amanda C. Smith is a Research Survey Methodologist within the Program for Research in Survey Methodology at RTI International. Smith’s work focuses on improving data quality, reducing respondent burden, and addressing potential sources of measurement error in web surveys through the implementation of best practices in web survey design. She leads RTI’s Agile Web Surveys group, which provides methodological and technical programming expertise to support the development of quick turnaround web survey solutions. In this role she has designed and programmed countless web surveys for a diverse portfolio of government, business, and foundation clients. Smith also frequently presents and publishes work related to best practices in web survey methodology, to include developing a web survey design appraisal system presented at AAPOR in 2020, A Systematic Approach for Evaluating Web Survey Design.

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This online training will provide an introduction to qualitative data analysis, focusing on content/thematic analysis. The session will cover the basics of qualitative data analysis and steps in the analysis process, including: transcribing, memoing, codebook development and coding, exploring content areas or themes, and interpreting and communicating findings. Participants will have the opportunity to practice developing and applying codes.

Presenters:

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The Race, Racism, and Racial Equity (R3) Symposium is a series of virtual events hosted by the University Office for Diversity and Inclusion, Jordan Institute for Families, and Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the UNC School of Social Work that bring together scholars and researchers from across campus to share their work with Carolina and the broader community.

The seventh R3 symposium event will focus on Highlighting Participatory Justice Scholarship: Working to Advance Racial Equity and explore the multitudinous ways advancing participatory justice benefits everyone. This concept springs from cognitive linguistic work on the “separate fates” thinking that can accompany being confronted with the truth about systemic and endemic racism. For example, white folks, most of whom truly know nary a person of color readily and often subconsciously attribute health, economic, labor, and other disparities to “how those people live.” By countering this damaging thinking by acknowledging that (1) there are serious problems with systemic racism, (2) policy and practice levers exist to begin meaningfully addressing said racism, and (3) implementing said levers most often works to our collective benefit. The levers are mostly about securing and guaranteeing the centering of historically marginalized voices and perspectives in all decisions that affect the way people live, work, and play.

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This session provides a discussion on the basic steps in the Devellis questionnaire development process. Topics include defining your construct(s) of interest, evaluation of existing scales, prior scale adaptation, item pool generation, scale format, and testing paradigms.

Presenter: Marcella Boynton, PhD
Biostatistician, NC TraCS KL2 and Education programs

Format: ~1 hour talk, 30 min Q&A

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The NC TraCS Biostatistics Seminar Series provides more in-depth discussion of select biostatistical topics for clinical and translational researchers who have basic quantitative training in biostatistical methods. Join us this fall for seminars on power analysis & sample size planning, parameter interpretation in generalized mixed regression models, basic steps in questionnaire development, and choosing the right graphs and tables for your data.

The CardioNerds Clinical Trials Network: Pairing Equitable Enrollment with Trainee Development

This NIH Collaboratory Rethinking Clinical Trials Grand Rounds features:

Amit Goyal, MD, MAS
Interventional/Structural Fellow, Cleveland Clinic
Cofounder of CardioNerds

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Biomedical Imaging for Precision Diagnosis, Prognosis, and Therapy

Join the UNC Program for Precision Medicine in Health Care (PPMH) for a free virtual mini-symposium. Precision medicine harnesses cutting edge data and technology to provide prediction of disease risk and choice of optimum treatment. Biomedical imaging is an integral part of early diagnosis and individually tailored treatment. The speakers at this mini-symposium will address data-driven approaches to developing personalized treatment strategies.

Presenters:

Mark Shen, PhD
Assistant Professor of Psychiatry & Neuroscience
Carolina Institute for Developmental Disabilities
UNC School of Medicine
Longitudinal neuroimaging to study the brain development of infants with neurodevelopmental disorders

Eran Dayan, PhD
Associate Professor
Department of Radiology
UNC School of Medicine
Artificial Intelligence-based stratification of progression along the Alzheimer disease continuum

Andrew Satterlee, PhD
Brain Slice Technology Program Manager Eshelman Institute for Innovation
Eshelman School of Pharmacy
A living Ex Vivo platform for functional, personalized brain cancer diagnosis

Email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for more information.

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The Orientation for New Clinical Research Personnel is a two-part series held on November 8 & 10 from 1 - 3:30 p.m. both days. The curriculum is designed to be a true orientation for new research personnel (either new to UNC or new to research altogether), but anyone is welcome to attend. The orientation will be held in person in room 219 of the TraCS suite on the 2nd floor of the Brinkhous-Bullitt building.

Topics covered in the orientation will include:
- The research landscape at UNC-Chapel Hill
- The research study life cycle and different types of research studies
- Good Clinical Practice
- Overview of research regulations and research processes
- Overview of research roles and responsibilities
- Informed consent

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Please contact Catherine Barnes at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. if you have questions regarding this training. 

This session will cover the scope and requirements of NIH's new Data Management and Sharing (DMS) Policy that goes into effect January 25, 2023. Supplementary NIH guidance on the DMS plans required in proposals, data repository selection, and allowable costs in proposal budgets will also be reviewed. Selected resources and tools to help researchers navigate the new requirements will be covered, including hands-on tour of selected UNC resources as time allows.

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Quantitative and qualitative data collection techniques for health measurements

This 4-hour course will be offered via Zoom. Attendance is required as the course will not be recorded.

Course Summary:

Measuring someone’s health by means of questionnaires is a challenging task. The concept of health is very broad – it encompasses a person’s physical, social and mental state – which makes conceptualization difficult. In addition, there is a high risk of socially desirable answers, since people like to indicate that they are doing well. Finally, health research is often conducted among people who are not fit or the elderly for whom surveys are a cognitively demanding task.

This course will focus on both qualitative and quantitative data collection techniques to measure health. First, participants will learn about collecting qualitative data on health through semi-structured interviews and researcher driven photo-elicitation interviews. Ensuring the scientific quality of these forms of data collection will be discussed on the basis of Guba and Lincoln’s trustworthiness criteria. Finally, we pay attention to analyzing qualitative data by means of a thematic analysis. Second, participants will learn more about implementation of surveys in hospital waiting rooms, taking the Total Survey Error Framework into account. Special attention will be paid to the design of attitude response scales.

Level: Beginner, some basic knowledge on survey research methodology is helpful

Instructors: Marieke Haan, PhD, and Yfke Ongena, PhD

Marieke Haan, PhD, is senior lecturer at the Sociology Department of the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. She teaches courses on Methodology & Data Collection and Qualitative Research Methods. Her research interests include mixed-device surveys, health surveys, and qualitative research methods in diverse fields (e.g., sociology, psychology and medical sciences). Haan’s most recent published papers focused on positive health perceptions of older adults, hospital waiting room surveys, and mobile device use in surveys. 

Yfke Ongena, PhD, is senior lecturer Communication and Information Sciences at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. Her research interests include interviewer and respondent interaction in survey interviews, data collection in health surveys and social desirability response bias.

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In this session, participants will have the opportunity to ask questions and seek feedback on their qualitative analysis from facilitators and other attendees. This session serves as a workshop in which participants get a chance to discuss and review qualitative analysis techniques while also learning from others.

To attend, participants must be working on a qualitative data analysis project and can seek feedback on any step in the process (e.g., coding, creating matrices/diagrams/other products, developing categories or themes, summarizing data). One does not need to have attended previous qualitative analysis training sessions administered by NC TraCS. However, participants should come with some knowledge of qualitative data analysis techniques.

Facilitators:
MaryBeth Grewe, MPH, Engagement and Qualitative Research Specialist
Simone Frank, MPH, Community Engagement and Outreach Specialist
Milenka Jean-Baptiste, MPH, Qualitative Research Specialist

Eligibility Screener

An introduction to daily life methods: daily diary and experience-sampling methods

This one-day course will be offered via Zoom. Attendance is required as the course will not be recorded.

Course Summary:

Daily life methods are a family of methods used to study what people do in their ordinary environments in their everyday lives through collecting data at least once a day for several days. Two common forms of daily life methods, daily diaries and experience sampling methods, will be emphasized in this course.

This course will be interactive and present opportunities for attendees to start thinking about how to apply daily life methods to their own programs of research.

Instructor: Katherine Cotter, PhD

Katherine Cotter, PhD, is a researcher with the Humanities and Human Flourishing Project in the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research has focused on people’s interactions with music and visual art, with an emphasis on assessing interactions in people’s typical, everyday environments. In her work, Cotter often uses daily life methods, which assess people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors as they occur in their everyday environments.  

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The Proposal Development Unit in the Office of Research and Innovation at NC State University invites everyone in the NC State community and the broader NC TraCS Institute community to participate in the NIH @ NC State Fall Grantsmanship Series.

NIH provides information about funded awards on the report.nih.gov website. This session will walk through some common searches and highlight some tips for finding what you want. Demonstrated searches will include finding a program officer in your field, identifying similar grants at NC State, and viewing the success rate for a given Institute or Center.

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The Orientation for New Clinical Research Personnel is a two-part series held on November 8 & 10 from 1 - 3:30 p.m. both days. The curriculum is designed to be a true orientation for new research personnel (either new to UNC or new to research altogether), but anyone is welcome to attend. The orientation will be held in person in room 219 of the TraCS suite on the 2nd floor of the Brinkhous-Bullitt building.

Topics covered in the orientation will include:
- The research landscape at UNC-Chapel Hill
- The research study life cycle and different types of research studies
- Good Clinical Practice
- Overview of research regulations and research processes
- Overview of research roles and responsibilities
- Informed consent

Register

Please contact Catherine Barnes at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. if you have questions regarding this training. 

Data Sharing and Pragmatic Clinical Trials: Law & Ethics Amidst a Changing Policy Landscape

This NIH Collaboratory Rethinking Clinical Trials Grand Rounds features:

Stephanie Morain, PhD, MPH
Assistant Professor
Ottawa Hospital Research Institute
Berman Institute of Bioethics &
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Kayte Spector-Bagdady, JD, MBioethics
Associate Director, Center for Bioethics & Social Sciences in Medicine
Assistant Professor of Obstetrics & Gynecology
University of Michigan Medical School

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Modular design and automated testing in R

This 3-hour course will be offered via Zoom. Attendance is required as the course will not be recorded.

Course Summary:

Research is relying on increasingly complex code. However, most academics have not received formal training in software development. This course will introduce participants to some of the best practices of professional software development. Participants will learn to structure their R code into reusable functions and store those functions as separate scripts and/or packages. Participants will learn to write automated tests for their functions, to help confirm that results are as expected and to ensure that future changes to code do not cause unexpected changes to results. We will also discuss how to create reproducible “environments” that record package versions in use to help avoid package version incompatibilities and ensure that results can be replicated even months or years after the original analysis. The course will primarily consist of a hands-on exercise to restructure a single long analysis file into functions and automated tests.

Instructor: Matthew Wigginton Bhagat-Conway, PhD

Matthew Wigginton Bhagat-Conway, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning and a consultant in the Odum Institute for Research in Social Science. His research interests are in travel behavior, urban transportation, and statistical methods for transportation data analysis. He is available to assist researchers with statistics and data analysis.

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Engagement in Research 101: Introduction to Engaging Patient & Community Partners in Research

Are you interested in learning about patient and community engagement and how it can benefit your research? Excited by the idea of engaging patient, community, or other partners in your research, but unsure about where to start? Want to know more about how to engage partners at different points throughout your study?

Engaging with patient and community partners who are impacted by your research can be instrumental to the success of your study. This online training will provide an overview of engagement in research, highlighting that engagement is not "all or nothing" or "one-size-fits-all", but instead encompasses a wide variety of low touch to high touch approaches that could be right for your study.

The session will cover common myths/misconceptions about engagement in research, benefits of and key considerations for engaging patient and community partners in research, and initial steps/existing resources you can leverage to begin engaging partners in your research.

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The Engaging Patient, Community, and Other Partners in Your Research: Online Training Series is a 3-part online training series about engaging patient, community, and other partners in research. You may register for the entire series OR any single training session.

Part 1 will focus on the basics of research engagement, providing an overview of patient and community engagement and its benefits, debunking common myths and misconceptions, and providing considerations and next steps for incorporating engagement approaches into your research.

Part 2 will cover specific engagement methods, including consultative community feedback sessions, advisory boards, and working with patient and community partners as members of a research team and/or Co-Principal Investigators.

Part 3 will focus on the nuances of building and maintaining partnerships, outlining best practices for developing and strengthening mutually beneficial partnerships and discussing common partnership challenges and solutions.

This training series was developed collaboratively with patient, community, and researcher partners and is co-sponsored by the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center and NC TraCS Institute.

The Society for Education and the Advancement of Research in Connected Health (SEARCH) is hosting their annual virtual SEARCH 2022—National Telehealth Research Symposium November 16-18, 2022.

The 3-day conference will feature 70 speakers showcasing connected health initiatives, strategies, and partnerships, a broad scope of up-to-date telehealth research initiatives across the spectrum of healthcare delivery, research-focused educational programming, and promotion of telehealth policy and equity.

Dr. David Rhew, Global Chief Medical Officer & VP of Healthcare at Microsoft will provide the Keynote address. Speakers represent telehealth experts from HRSA, US Department of Veterans Affairs, Geisinger Health, Harvard Medical School, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, UC Davis, UNC-Chapel Hill, Duke University, Advocate Children's Hospital, and Imagine Pediatrics to name a few.

Students only pay $75 for the full 3-days.

Dates/Times:
Nov 16 — 12 - 5:20 p.m.
Nov 17 — 12 - 6:15 p.m.
Nov 16 — 12 - 5:10 p.m.

For more information, visit searchsociety.org/search2022.

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The SPROUT-CTSA Collaborative Telehealth Research Network (PI: David McSwain, MD MPH - System Chief Medical Informatics Officer, UNC Health) is an NCATS U01 award based at UNC-Chapel Hill since April 2022. The SPROUT-CTSA collaborates with SEARCH Society to host this symposium.

Chloe Coletta (she/her) and Sharon Son (she/her) will provide a 45-minute overview of two different decision aid tools that they developed using Semblie, a free and easy-to-use web-based platform developed by researchers at UNC and RTI International.

This webinar will provide attendees with concrete examples of how Semblie can be used to design prototypes and streamline the development process.

Coletta and Son will present on the development of a shared decision making tool to better help cisgender women in NC make a decision about starting pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and a decision-making tool for breast cancer patients to inform them about COVID-19 vaccinations and alleviate vaccine hesitancy.

Accessibility: This webinar will be recorded. English language, live transcription will be enabled during the webinar. Please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to share additional access needs.

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This event is co-sponsored by RTI International.

This is an online, interactive training that will focus on sharing qualitative data for transparency and reuse. The session will introduce qualitative data sharing, the process, and considerations including file organization, documentation, assessing for sharing, and publishing in a data repository. Participants will have the opportunity to review a qualitative data package, ask questions, and share experiences.

Presenters:

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This training is part of the NC TraCS Qualitative Research Training Series. This session is co-sponsored by the H. W. Odum Institute for Research in Social Science.

Project Management: Completion Criteria

Please join the UNC Network of Research Professionals and Ilona Sher, MBA, PMP, for an educational session on Project Management completion criteria.

Ilona Sher, MBA, PMP, teaches Applied Project Management: Frameworks, Principles and Techniques for the UNC Graduate School. Sher has been teaching courses in Applied Project Management for Carolina since the 2015. In addition to her teaching, she advises a Triangle-based software company and provides coaching services to senior executives at Triangle-based nonprofits.

- Learn some basic project management terminology

- Understand what changes occur during a project lifecycle

- Articulate the importance of completion criteria and practice developing some

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The Society for Education and the Advancement of Research in Connected Health (SEARCH) is hosting their annual virtual SEARCH 2022—National Telehealth Research Symposium November 16-18, 2022.

The 3-day conference will feature 70 speakers showcasing connected health initiatives, strategies, and partnerships, a broad scope of up-to-date telehealth research initiatives across the spectrum of healthcare delivery, research-focused educational programming, and promotion of telehealth policy and equity.

Dr. David Rhew, Global Chief Medical Officer & VP of Healthcare at Microsoft will provide the Keynote address. Speakers represent telehealth experts from HRSA, US Department of Veterans Affairs, Geisinger Health, Harvard Medical School, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, UC Davis, UNC-Chapel Hill, Duke University, Advocate Children's Hospital, and Imagine Pediatrics to name a few.

Students only pay $75 for the full 3-days.

Dates/Times:
Nov 16 — 12 - 5:20 p.m.
Nov 17 — 12 - 6:15 p.m.
Nov 16 — 12 - 5:10 p.m.

For more information, visit searchsociety.org/search2022.

register

The SPROUT-CTSA Collaborative Telehealth Research Network (PI: David McSwain, MD MPH - System Chief Medical Informatics Officer, UNC Health) is an NCATS U01 award based at UNC-Chapel Hill since April 2022. The SPROUT-CTSA collaborates with SEARCH Society to host this symposium.

The Society for Education and the Advancement of Research in Connected Health (SEARCH) is hosting their annual virtual SEARCH 2022—National Telehealth Research Symposium November 16-18, 2022.

The 3-day conference will feature 70 speakers showcasing connected health initiatives, strategies, and partnerships, a broad scope of up-to-date telehealth research initiatives across the spectrum of healthcare delivery, research-focused educational programming, and promotion of telehealth policy and equity.

Dr. David Rhew, Global Chief Medical Officer & VP of Healthcare at Microsoft will provide the Keynote address. Speakers represent telehealth experts from HRSA, US Department of Veterans Affairs, Geisinger Health, Harvard Medical School, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, UC Davis, UNC-Chapel Hill, Duke University, Advocate Children's Hospital, and Imagine Pediatrics to name a few.

Students only pay $75 for the full 3-days.

Dates/Times:
Nov 16 — 12 - 5:20 p.m.
Nov 17 — 12 - 6:15 p.m.
Nov 16 — 12 - 5:10 p.m.

For more information, visit searchsociety.org/search2022.

register

The SPROUT-CTSA Collaborative Telehealth Research Network (PI: David McSwain, MD MPH - System Chief Medical Informatics Officer, UNC Health) is an NCATS U01 award based at UNC-Chapel Hill since April 2022. The SPROUT-CTSA collaborates with SEARCH Society to host this symposium.

The FIRST-ABC Pragmatic Trials of Non-Invasive Respiratory Support In Children

This NIH Collaboratory Rethinking Clinical Trials Grand Rounds features:

Padmanabhan Ramnarayan (Ram), MBBS, MD, FRCPCH, FFICM
Reader in Pediatric Critical Care
Imperial College London

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Engagement in Research Nuts & Bolts: Specific Approaches for Engaging Patient & Community Partners in Research

There is no "one-size-fits-all" approach to engaging patient, community, or other partners in your research! Rather, there are a variety of engagement methods to suit your study's needs, your research team's capacity, and your partners' interests.

This online training will describe three common approaches for working with patient, community, and other partners in your research: 1) consultative community feedback sessions; 2) advisory boards; and 3) sustained collaboration with partners as Co-Principal Investigators or members of the research team.

The session will cover considerations for choosing these specific engagement methods, as well as concrete processes and steps for implementing each approach. Participation in our Engagement in Research 101 training is not required to attend this session; however, some knowledge of engagement, whether from prior training(s) or personal experience, may foster deeper understanding of the material in this session.

Register

The Engaging Patient, Community, and Other Partners in Your Research: Online Training Series is a 3-part online training series about engaging patient, community, and other partners in research. You may register for the entire series OR any single training session.

Part 1will focus on the basics of research engagement, providing an overview of patient and community engagement and its benefits, debunking common myths and misconceptions, and providing considerations and next steps for incorporating engagement approaches into your research.

Part 2 will cover specific engagement methods, including consultative community feedback sessions, advisory boards, and working with patient and community partners as members of a research team and/or Co-Principal Investigators.

Part 3 will focus on the nuances of building and maintaining partnerships, outlining best practices for developing and strengthening mutually beneficial partnerships and discussing common partnership challenges and solutions.

This training series was developed collaboratively with patient, community, and researcher partners and is co-sponsored by the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center and NC TraCS Institute.