Oral

Investigators have expressed the need for brief assessment tools that could be used as a form of ‘common currency’ across diverse study designs and populations. When individual studies employ unique assessment batteries, comparisons between studies and combining data from multiple studies can be problematic, if not impossible. . The overall goal the Toolbox is to develop unified/integrated methods and measures of cognitive, emotional, motor and sensory health for use in large population-based epidemiological and prevention or intervention trials for U.S. residents, in both English and Spanish-speaking subjects, aged 3-85 years (The Lancet, Vol. 9, February 2010, 138 - 139). With an available 'toolbox' of measures, yields from these large and often expensive studies can be maximized by allowing a much larger number of important research questions regarding neurological and behavioral health to be studied—both with respect to the primary study aims, and to those arising from secondary data analyses—with a minimal increment in subject burden and cost.Enhancing both access and economy, the final suite of instruments will be available to researchers without copyright restrictions. 48 measures, divided into four Domains (with their respective sub-Domains), have been selected for Toolbox: Cognition:Executive Function, Episodic Memory, Working Memory,Processing Speed,Language,Attention Emotion:Negative Affect, Positive Affect, Stress & Coping, Social Relationships Motor:Locomotion, Strength, Non-Vestibular Balance, Endurance, Dexterity Sensory:Vision, Audition, Vestibular Balance, Somatosensation, Taste, Olfaction For the Toolbox to be considered valuable for use in future research, the measures will have undergone several phases of development, including pretesting/pilot testing, validation and calibration and field testing (also called "norming"). The norming phase, utilizing a probability-based sampling design, yielding a nationally representative weighted sample of households and eligible persons, involves the collection of data from 4500 individuals selected by age, race/ethnicity and geographically diverse areas. In order to provide general population normative values acceptable to the epidemiological and clinical research community, the goal is to complete 100 cases by gender for each of the adults and 50 cases for the children.

Session Objectives: 1. Discuss the purpose, novel potential and promise of the NIH Toolbox. 2. Identify and gain insight into approaches to instrument selection and testing across a wide array of subject-matter domains and diverse scientific interests. 3. Explain the unique methodological and logistic challenges posed by a project of this scale.

CE Credits: Medical (CME), Health Education (CHES), Nursing (CNE), Public Health (CPH)