The Medical Research Council’s Framework for Complex Interventions Sample Clauses

The Medical Research Council’s Framework for Complex Interventions. Studying the composition of effective community services is immensely difficult because this must consider so many, widely different, factors. Service delivery itself can be considered as multiple complex interventions, which have been described as those interventions that contain several interacting components (Xxxxx et al. 2008). To add to this complexity a component can further be defined as “a person, intervention, method of working or style of service organisation that makes an important contribution to improve outcome for patients when incorporated into a service” (Xxxxxxxx et al. 2004). Just over a decade ago the Medical Research Council devised a framework comprising five phases for the design and evaluation of complex health interventions (Xxxxxxxx et al. 2000). This framework has been widely influential (Xxxxx et al. 2008). This framework identified five stages along a continuum of increasing evidence, with theory informing the development of a testable model (Phase I), which can be evaluated in an exploratory trial (Phase II) that helps to establish the effect size for the intervention followed by a definitive randomised controlled trial (Phase III), after which the intervention is disseminated using a long-term implementation strategy (Phase IV). This recommended guidance for researching a complex intervention such as community services for people with ID and severe mental health problems was therefore used to investigate these services in a carefully phased approach, starting with modelling and feasibility that should enable later progression to exploratory studies and ultimately if possible to definitive evaluations using randomized controlled trials.