Conducting practice-based projects among chiropractors: a manual

This manual provides a stringent step-by-step approach for conducting clinic-based research. It describes the competencies and requirements of an effective working group, how to recruit participating clinicians and how to empower, encourage and support these clinicians to obtain good compliance.The main advantage of the method is the high compliance of participating clinicians compared to many other clinical studies. Difficulties with the method are described and suggestions for solutions are presented.This manual is a description of a method that may be of use for clinical researchers in the chiropractic setting.Clinical research has the advantage of mimicking clinical reality. The patient population, the procedures, the decisions and the outcomes will represent what happens normally. Further, the study results are easier to implement if the studied procedures are already tested in a clinical setting.Over the past 15 years, a number of practice-based research projects have been performed among chiropractors in the Nordic countries in which data on patients have been collected using questionnaires [1-12]. Some of these studies are summarized in Table 1. In addition, an international study has been carried out [13]. The above studies have all been multi-centre clinical studies and they have yielded high compliance rates compared to similar research [14-16].The successful completion of these projects depended on the participation of four groups of people: 1) the professional researchers, 2) the project group members, 3) the data collecting chiropractors, and 4) the patients.The professional researcher(s) is/are responsible for the methodological aspects of the study, data analysis and the final report. The project group together with the researcher(s) assists both in the conceptual stages and the data collection. It may also be active during analysis and report preparation. The data collecting chiropractors are responsible for the data collection and the patients prov