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Quantifying and addressing the prevalence and bias of study designs in the environmental and social sciences.

ABSTRACT: Building trust in science and evidence-based decision-making depends heavily on the credibility of studies and their findings. Researchers employ many different study designs that vary in their risk of bias to evaluate the true effect of interventions or impacts. Here, we empirically quantify, on a large scale, the prevalence of different study designs and the magnitude of bias in their estimates. Randomised designs and controlled observational designs with pre-intervention sampling were used by just 23% of intervention studies in biodiversity conservation, and 36% of intervention studies in social science. We demonstrate, through pairwise within-study comparisons across 49 environmental datasets, that these types of designs usually give less biased estimates than simpler observational designs. We propose a model-based approach to combine study estimates that may suffer from different levels of study design bias, discuss the implications for evidence synthesis, and how to facilitate the use of more credible study designs.

SUBMITTER: Christie AP

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7733498 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Quantifying and addressing the prevalence and bias of study designs in the environmental and social sciences.

Christie Alec P AP Abecasis David D Adjeroud Mehdi M Alonso Juan C JC Amano Tatsuya T Anton Alvaro A Baldigo Barry P BP Barrientos Rafael R Bicknell Jake E JE Buhl Deborah A DA Cebrian Just J Ceia Ricardo S RS Cibils-Martina Luciana L Clarke Sarah S Claudet Joachim J Craig Michael D MD Davoult Dominique D De Backer Annelies A Donovan Mary K MK Eddy Tyler D TD França Filipe M FM Gardner Jonathan P A JPA Harris Bradley P BP Huusko Ari A Jones Ian L IL Kelaher Brendan P BP Kotiaho Janne S JS López-Baucells Adrià A Major Heather L HL Mäki-Petäys Aki A Martín Beatriz B Martín Carlos A CA Martin Philip A PA Mateos-Molina Daniel D McConnaughey Robert A RA Meroni Michele M Meyer Christoph F J CFJ Mills Kade K Montefalcone Monica M Noreika Norbertas N Palacín Carlos C Pande Anjali A Pitcher C Roland CR Ponce Carlos C Rinella Matt M Rocha Ricardo R Ruiz-Delgado María C MC Schmitter-Soto Juan J JJ Shaffer Jill A JA Sharma Shailesh S Sher Anna A AA Stagnol Doriane D Stanley Thomas R TR Stokesbury Kevin D E KDE Torres Aurora A Tully Oliver O Vehanen Teppo T Watts Corinne C Zhao Qingyuan Q Sutherland William J WJ

Nature communications 20201211 1

Building trust in science and evidence-based decision-making depends heavily on the credibility of studies and their findings. Researchers employ many different study designs that vary in their risk of bias to evaluate the true effect of interventions or impacts. Here, we empirically quantify, on a large scale, the prevalence of different study designs and the magnitude of bias in their estimates. Randomised designs and controlled observational designs with pre-intervention sampling were used by ...[more]

PMID: 33311448

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Project description:Increasing recognition of the complexity of environmental problems and the need to understand social processes and human values is leading environmental management agencies in many nations, including the USA, to integrate more research from the social sciences through the inclusion of social scientists on interdisciplinary teams. For this study we conducted focus groups at three research laboratories within the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Research and Development to better understand how inclusion of social sciences influenced the research process and outcomes, and the barriers to and facilitators of integration. The focus groups identified effects on the research process including improved problem framing, the introduction of new methodologies, and greater stakeholder and public inclusion, while research outcomes included the inclusion or refinement of social and environmental perspectives and systems thinking, increased translatability of research, and new partnerships. Barriers identified included lack of familiarity with social sciences which affected perceptions of social sciences and organizational capacity to absorb and apply social science expertise. Facilitators included receptivity of team members, intentional communication strategies, and project structures and organizational commitment that support interdisciplinary work. Finding a key barrier to be lack of clarity about the different roles social sciences play in translational research, we present a conceptual model defining the roles and contributions of social scientists that clarifies the distinction between "integration" of social sciences in research and "application" of skills and knowledge from the social sciences which play distinct but equally important roles in translational research approaches and solutions-driven research. These insights on the ways social sciences contribute to translational research efforts advance integration of social and natural sciences in environmental science research, particularly in applied contexts.

Dataset Information

Quantifying and addressing the prevalence and bias of study designs in the environmental and social sciences.

Publications

Quantifying and addressing the prevalence and bias of study designs in the environmental and social sciences.

Similar Datasets

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