Henry W. Riecken Jr. (1917-2012).

Presents an obituary for Henry (Hank) W. Riecken Jr. In 1950, Riecken received his doctorate from Harvard University, having studied in the Department of Social Relations, which enjoyed a well-known relationship with the Department of Psychology.

Inadequate reporting of research ethics review and informed consent in cluster randomised trials: review of random sample of published trials.

Objectives: To investigate the extent to which authors of cluster randomised trials adhered to two basic requirements of the World Medical Association's Declaration of Helsinki and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors' uniform requirements for manuscripts (namely, reporting of research ethics review and informed consent), to determine whether the adequacy of reporting has improved over time, and to identify characteristics of cluster randomised trials associated with reporting of ethics practices.

Design: Review of a random sample of published cluster randomised trials from an electronic search in Medline.

Setting: Cluster randomised trials in health research published in English language journals from 2000 to 2008.

Replication in prevention science.

Replication research is essential for the advancement of any scientific field. In this paper, we argue that prevention science will be better positioned to help improve public health if (a) more replications are conducted; (b) those replications are systematic, thoughtful, and conducted with full knowledge of the trials that have preceded them; and (c) state-of-the art techniques are used to summarize the body of evidence on the effects of the interventions. Under real-world demands it is often not feasible to wait for multiple replications to accumulate before making decisions about intervention adoption.

Associations between the Youth/Adolescent Questionnaire, the Youth/Adolescent Activity Questionnaire, and body mass index z score in low-income inner-city fourth through sixth grade children.

Background: Diet and physical activity are important factors in the etiology, prevention, and treatment of chronic diseases such as obesity and its associated comorbidities. Accurate measures of diet and activity are critical in understanding how these lifestyle and behavioral factors covary to affect health status.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to investigate the relation between body mass index (BMI) z score and self-report measures of diet and activity, the Youth/Adolescent Questionnaire (YAQ) and the Youth/Adolescent Activity Questionnaire (YAAQ), respectively.

Standards of evidence: criteria for efficacy, effectiveness and dissemination.

Ever increasing demands for accountability, together with the proliferation of lists of evidence-based prevention programs and policies, led the Society for Prevention Research to charge a committee with establishing standards for identifying effective prevention programs and policies. Recognizing that interventions that are effective and ready for dissemination are a subset of effective programs and policies, and that effective programs and policies are a subset of efficacious interventions, SPR's Standards Committee developed overlapping sets of standards. We designed these Standards to assist practitioners, policy makers, and administrators to determine which interventions are efficacious, which are effective, and which are ready for dissemination.

Quality of evidence: usefulness in measuring the quality of health care.

Background: In 1998, the Committee on Health Care Quality in America was created and given the charge of devising a strategy to achieve substantial improvement in the quality of health care for all Americans. One strategy to move the quality agenda forward is the use of evidence by both providers of health care and consumers of health care. One feature of this agenda, evidence-based practice, refers to a hierarchy of evidence ranging from individual randomized, controlled trials to expert opinion.