Week 2

Purpose

The purpose of this video lecture is to discuss purpose of control condition, major types of control condition, pros and cons, as well as how to select appropriate control.

Meet the Guest Speaker

Kevin Fontaine

Kevin Fontaine, PhD

Professor, Chair and Antoine Lavoisier Endowed Professor of Energetics and Health Lifestyles, Department of Health Behavior, School of Public Health, University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), Birmingham, AL .

Dr. Kevin Fontaine’s obesity-related research has focused on the association of obesity to mortality, clinical obesity treatment, relation of obesity to cancer screening and preventive care, and the quality of life among obese persons. He has also conducted hundreds of intervention groups with overweight and obese adults to promote lifestyle changes.

His other research has focused on the role of lifestyle physical activity in improving health status, symptoms, and body composition in adults with and without chronic disease. Recent interests include the role of low carbohydrate diets on preserving lean mass during weight loss among older adults, the effects of ketogenic diets on type 2 diabetes, Parkinson’s, and cancer, neuro-dynamic strain in chronic fatigue syndrome, and the effects of non-deceptive placebos to improve patient-reported outcomes such as pain and fatigue. Dr. Fontaine serves as an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Health, Behavior, and Society at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health.

He has nearly 30 years of experience conducting obesity-related lifestyle modification trials, serving as PI, Co-PI, co-Investigator or interventionist on numerous private foundation and NIH grants.

Video Lecture

The video lecture is broken into two parts: Overview of control conditions and selecting appropriate control.

Please click each tab to watch each part of the video lecture.

Overview of Control Conditions
Selecting Appropriate Control

Overview of Control Conditions

Selecting Appropriate Control

Accessibility Note: To access auto closed captions (CC) services please click on the icon in the video's bottom right corner. Manual CC are available by submitting a request for services to ATAC: (812) 856-4112 or atac@iu.edu

NOTE: Please click on the link below to download the video lecture slides:

Choice of Control Condition Based on Hypothesis and Anticipated Claims

Reading

Below are papers you may be interested in reading regarding this topic (click on each article title to download it as a PDF file):

Lindquist, R., Wyman, J. F., Talley, K. M., Findorff, M. J., & Gross, C. R. (2007). Design of control‐group conditions in clinical trials of behavioral interventions. Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 39(3), 214-221.
Au, D. H., Castro, M., & Krishnan, J. A. (2007). Selection of controls in clinical trials: introduction and conference summary. Proceedings of the American Thoracic Society, 4(7), 567-569.
Freedland, K. E., Mohr, D. C., Davidson, K. W., & Schwartz, J. E. (2011). Usual and unusual care: existing practice control groups in randomized controlled trials of behavioral interventions. Psychosomatic medicine, 73(4), 323.