Intervention Description

• Clear description of key aspects of the intervention

Quality–Study design

• Prospective study design
• Appropriate and concurrent comparison arm
• Random or minimally biased assignment of subjects to study arms

Quality–Study implementation and analysis

• At least a 3-month postintervention follow-up assessment for each study arm (with recall referring to postintervention period only)
• At least a 70% retention rate at a single follow-up assessment for each study arm
• Comparison between intervention arm and an appropriate comparison arm
• Analysis of subjects in study arms as originally assigned
• Analysis of subjects regardless of the level of intervention exposure
• Use of appropriate cluster-level analyses if assigned to study arms by cluster or group
• Analysis must be based on postintervention levels or among pre-post changes in measures
• For pre-post changes used in analysis, measures must be identical, including identical recall period
• Analysis based on an α =.05 (or more stringent) and a 2-sided test
• In nonrandomized assignment, either no statistical differences in baseline levels of the outcome exist or baseline differences are controlled for in the analysis

Strength of Evidence–Significant positive intervention effects

• Positive and statistically significant (p ≤ .05) intervention effect for ≥ 1 relevant outcome measure
  • A positive intervention effect is defined as a greater reduction in HIV/STD incidence or risk behaviors or a greater increase in HIV protective behaviors in the intervention arm relative to the comparison arm.
  • A relevant outcome is defined as a behavior (e.g., abstinence, mutual monogamy, number of sex partners, negotiating safer sex, condom use, injection drug use, HIV testing behaviors) that directly impacts HIV risk or a biologic measure indicating HIV or STD infection (i.e., HIV or STD incidence)
• Effect at the follow-up and based on the analyses that meet study implementation and analysis criteria

Strength of Evidence–Negative intervention effects

• No negative and statistically significant (p < .05) intervention effect for any relevant outcome (A negative intervention effect is defined as a greater increase in HIV/STD incidence or risk behaviors or a greater decrease in HIV protective behaviors in the intervention arm relative to the comparison arm.)
• No other statistically significant harmful intervention effect
• For an intervention with a replication evaluation, no significant negative intervention effects in the replication study

Overall fatal flaw

• No evidence that any additional limitation was a fatal flaw
  • A fatal flaw has occurred when the limitation is thought to introduce considerable bias, thus substantially reducing the confidence of the findings
  • Examples of fatal flaws include: small sample size (<50 participants per study arm); effects only found within a potentially biased subset analyses; substantial missing data

Go to top

Back to Efficacy Criteria