The Challenges of Study Design: Considerations in Developing the PACT Research Program

Developing a study to examine the longitudinal, multi-domain pathways whereby risk factors influence the development of psychopathology begins with developing a model but quickly moves to the level where the researchers must begin to make choices, sometimes difficult ones, about research design, identifying potential participants, and the measures and methods used. This chapter reviews the decisions that we needed to make to design and conduct this study and how those decisions were influenced by a combination of theoretical and practical considerations. We discuss such factors as what mixture of race, ethnicity, and gender to try to recruit to constitute the sample; at what age to begin recruitment; where and how to recruit participants; parent participation and who should complete study measures; the use of self-report, parent ratings, and observational measures; choosing measures of psychopathology symptoms; and approaches to data analyses, including handling missing data, determining which pathways between risk factors to include, and conducting the analyses of the structural models.