Abstracts
Peer-Review Summary
Peer review of PCORI-funded research helps make sure the report presents complete, balanced, and useful information about the research. It also assesses how the project addressed PCORI’s Methodology Standards. During peer review, experts read a draft report of the research and provide comments about the report. These experts may include a scientist focused on the research topic, a specialist in research methods, a patient or caregiver, and a healthcare professional. These reviewers cannot have conflicts of interest with the study.
The peer reviewers point out where the draft report may need revision. For example, they may suggest ways to improve descriptions of the conduct of the study or to clarify the connection between results and conclusions. Sometimes, awardees revise their draft reports twice or more to address all of the reviewers’ comments.
Reviewers’ comments and the investigator’s changes in response included the following: The awardee revised the conclusions to clarify that there were no differences between children in the two study groups (enhanced primary care and health coaching plus enhanced primary care) regarding body mass index (BMI) or family-centered outcomes. Both groups improved over time in these areas.
- The awardee added a thorough description of the role that patients and stakeholders played in the study design, execution, and interpretation. It also described its website, which provided examples of all patient and stakeholder intervention materials.
- Responding to reviewer comments that the report did not put the changes in outcome measures into a clinical context, the awardee added to the statistical analysis section a description of accepted clinically meaningful changes in BMI, a main outcome measure. The investigator noted that it was unable to add similar values for quality of life, the other major outcome, because any improvement is usually considered clinically meaningful.
- Addressing the patient reviewer’s request to better understand the areas of children’s lives that could be improved by the research, the investigator presented information about family-centered outcomes for childhood obesity that both interventions improved.
- The awardee addressed reviewer questions about blinding. It included a section in the methods describing the procedures for blinding study staff, participants, and clinicians to specific study hypotheses and to intervention assignment.
Final Research Report
View this project's final research report.
Study Protocol
View this project's study protocol.
Conflict of Interest Disclosures
View the COI disclosure form.
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