Effectiveness, Transportability, and Dissemination of Interventions: What Matters When?

TLDR

The authors highlight transportability questions and key conceptual and design features that distinguish efficacy, effectiveness, and dissemination research. They identify and define key aspects of the progression from efficacy research to dissemination of a new intervention. Using an ongoing study of multisystemic therapy, the authors illustrate how intervention, practitioner, client, delivery model, organizational, and system variables interact, and discuss sample research questions, designs, and anticipated challenges in transportability research. They provide examples showing how these variables affect the transportability of different intervention types.

Abstract

The authors identify and define key aspects of the progression from research on the efficacy of a new intervention to its dissemination. They highlight the role of transportability questions that arise in that progression and illustrate key conceptual and design features that differentiate efficacy, effectiveness, and dissemination research. An ongoing study of the transportability of multisystemic therapy is used to illustrate independent and interdependent aspects of effectiveness, transportability, and dissemination studies. Variables relevant to the progression from treatment efficacy to dissemination include features of the intervention itself as well as variables pertaining to the practitioner, client, model of service delivery, organization, and service system. The authors provide examples of how some of these variables are relevant to the transportability of different types of interventions. They also discuss sample research questions, study designs, and challenges to be anticipated in the arena of transportability research.