Frequently Asked Questions

The MBRC is designed by members and founders of a sister initiative, the Exposure Therapy Consortium (ETC). With a similar structure, the ETC quickly grew to encompass over 125 members representing over 20 institutions. By the time the second study was proposed within the ETC, 16 sites across the world signed on to run the study within a 3-week bid period. The result is that this study is likely to be the largest exposure therapy mechanistic trial for anxiety ever conducted, while also providing the immediate strengths of cross-site and split sample replication of all findings. In sum, we have good evidence that programs like the ETC and MBRC can provide a dramatically successful research strategy for its collaborators and mechanistic science.

Collaborative projects facilitated by the MBRC are an excellent way for junior faculty at medical centers to get involved in larger-scale projects. The strategy of collaborations among a large number of sites (each making a relatively small contribution in terms of the number of research participants) allows junior faculty to make use of their local clinic-patient flow to answer important clinical questions about mechanisms of change. In addition, this research collaboration will put you in collaborative contact with researchers with similar interests across the world, and the joint publication will allow you to meet the research requirements of your institution within the context of your mixed clinical and research appointment

Joining MBRC simply means that you have signed a memorandum of understanding to receive group emails and to participate in shared research at some point, when and if an MBRC project fits your broader research agenda.

How would you like to skip the challenging process of R21/R33 funding in order to pursue some of your more novel research questions? MBRC collaboration is an excellent way to pilot (at lower effort) new research ideas that are not ready for an R01 application. In addition, members of your MBRC collaborative network may also serve as sites with demonstrated feasibility of collaboration for the subsequent R01 application.

Some research questions, including investigations of mechanism measures and their correlates or studies of emerging health behaviors appropriate to college-aged samples, may be ideal for the samples you can study. The ability to offer class credit for participation provides an ideal way to conduct low- or no-cost research across a range of institutions like yours.

MBRC is not meant to replace any disorder-specific network, but instead to offer collaborative options when the research target is health behavior change as studied from an experimental medicine (mechanistic science) perspective. We understand that this research target may or may not fit well within other existing collaborative networks; MBRC is here to serve research when other extant networks are not available or appropriate for the investigations being proposed.

MBRC membership gives any member the ability to propose studies to be offered to the full collaborative network of investigators. But there are some requirements. All procedures for the study need to be piloted to ensure they have the capacity to run smoothly across sites and to be feasible for the participant population to be targeted. Then the protocol needs to be submitted to the MBRC Rigor and Reproducibility Study and to be approved by the Research Steering Committee. It is the goal of these committees to approve as many MBRC collaborative studies as possible to ensure that members have the best opportunity to join collaborations that are likely to result in important and publishable findings. The MBRC website provides information on SOPs for how the lead site is to provide training and resources to collaborating sites to help ensure consistency and success for each project. All projects must be registered within the Open Science Framework and provide de-identified data to the OSF. Also, projects need to submit pre- and post-study information on the mechanism under study to the SOBC Measure Repository and attend to CLIMBR guidelines for the resulting publication from the proposed work.

All sites must have the capacity to use REDCap as a primary tool for data collection and must have PI and research assistant effort available to complete the study. Also, all use sites are expected to be reliant on the IRB at the lead site whenever feasible. Non-US sites will need approval from their own IRB (HREC– Human Research Ethics Committee) and hold the responsibility for any language translations required.

Authorship is guided by the MBRC publication guidelines, with the expectation that all approved projects will provide pre-specified authorship slots (e.g., 2-3) for each collaborating sites. First and last authorship is likely to be designated to the lead site that proposed the study, and additional authors are frequently listed in alphabetical order unless otherwise specified at the time of the letter of intent for collaborative research engagement. All authorship lists are to close with notation of the collaborative network: “for the Mechanistic Behavioral Research Consortium.”

Depending on the study, participating sites may need to agree to some fixed costs (other then investigator effort) to run the study. For example, unique equipment costs (e.g., 3D headsets, replaceable leads for physiological monitoring, copyrighted measures) may be incurred for a particular study, and hence interested sites will have to purchase this equipment if they want to collaborate. Likewise, some studies may require compensation to participants for time or parking costs during days of participation.

Here are a few mock examples of the type of projects that could run within the MBRC: Given data that positive affectivity is predictive of a range of mental and physical health outcomes and is emerging as a mechanistic target in its own right, I would like to extend this research to my research domain: oral health. For that question, I want to address initial research questions to a college student cohort, making use of MBRC sites with large undergraduate subject pools (i.e., students in introductory psychology classes). I am seeking sites to conduct self-report survey research to understand the association between trait positive affectivity and oral health habits, with particular attention to potential mediating influences from sleep disruption. Site burden: Effort from a site PI and an undergraduate research volunteer to survey completion on the REDCap. Costs: None, class credit provides reimbursement to participants Working memory capacity has been implicated as important to a number of health behaviors. Using the Adaptive N-Back Task as a core measure (see SOBC measure repository) I would like to understand the contribution of lower working memory capacity to poor health care decisions under conditions of higher stress. The target cohort is cardiac patients presenting for clinic-based care within the first 6 months of their cardiac event and who are willing to complete a brief on-line assessment of working memory along with assessments of other control variables. This study involves both a baseline assessment and a follow-up assessment six months later. Each hospital-based site is to assess a minimum of 15 participants. Site burden: Effort from a site PI and research assistant to recruit participants and utilize the REDCap-based initial and follow-up survey systems. Costs: None to site; the lead site will provide Amazon gift cards to compensate participants.