Commitment to implementation of a clinical trial protocol: Variation by protocol and employment rate.

The National Drug Abuse Clinical Trials Network (CTN) collaborates with community treatment programs to conduct clinical trials testing the effectiveness of emerging pharmacological and behavioral therapies for alcohol and drug use disorders. Each community treatment program is unique and variation in organizational and workforce characteristics may contribute to variation in patient outcomes. A clinical trial completed within the CTN (CTN-0017), for example, found that distance between detoxification and outpatient clinics was the strongest influence on entering outpatient care following detoxification (Campbell et al, 2010). An interesting and potentially influential workforce characteristic is staff commitment toward implementation of the study intervention. Variation in goal commitment may affect the quality of implementation of a clinical trial intervention and contribute to variation between study sites in patient outcomes.

For this study, goal commitment was assessed prior to the implementation of three CTN trials (CTN-0031 (STAGE-12), CTN-0046 (S-CAST), and CTN-0044 (Web Delivery)) to assess variation between protocols and variation between study site within protocols. The analysis found that both protocol type and job title/job role were associated with variation in goal commitment in the three trials.

Related protocols: CTN-0031, CTN-0044, CTN-0046