Linda M. Collins is Distinguished Professor of Human Development and Family Studies, Professor of Statistics, and the director of The Methodology Center at the Pennsylvania State University. She is interested in most aspects of research methods. Her current work focuses on experimental and non-experimental design, particularly for building, optimizing and evaluating behavioral, biobehavioral, and biomedical interventions. Professor Collins also has a long-standing interest in models for longitudinal data, particularly latent transition analysis, and other latent class models.
Kari C. Kugler is an Assistant Teaching Professor in Biobehavioral Health and an Affiliate of the Methodology Center at Penn State. Trained as a behavioral epidemiologist, her work focuses on the design and analysis of multi-component, multi-level interventions targeting a wide range of health behaviors among various populations and contexts. She collaborates with intervention scientists on building highly effective and efficient behavioral interventions.
Behavioral, biobehavioral, and biomedical interventions are programs with the objective of improving and maintaining human health and well-being, broadly defined, in individuals, families, schools, organizations, or communities. These interventions may be aimed at, for example, preventing or treating disease, promoting physical and mental health, preventing violence, or improving academic achievement.
This book provides additional information on a principled empirical framework for developing interventions that are more effective, efficient, economical, and scalable. This framework is introduced in the monograph, "Optimization of Behavioral, Biobehavioral, and Biomedical Interventions: The Multiphase Optimization Strategy (MOST)" by Linda M. Collins (Springer, 2018). The present book is focused on advanced topics related to MOST. The chapters, all written by experts, are devoted to topics ranging from experimental design and data analysis to development of a conceptual model and implementation of a complex experiment in the field. Intervention scientists who are preparing to apply MOST will find this book an important reference and guide for their research. Fields to which this work pertains include public health (medicine, nursing, health economics, implementation sciences), behavioral sciences (psychology, criminal justice), statistics, and education.