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Table 1 Summary of study experiences and implications for future studies

From: Challenges in conducting natural experiments in parks—lessons from the REVAMP study

Study specific experiences

Lessons learnt/implications for future studies

Partnerships:

The inclusion of industry partners had multiple benefits including study ownership, greater insight into the intervention, and facilitation of research translation.

Consider the inclusion of partners prior to the commencement of the project.

Flexibility:

Extraneous factors affected the timing and delivery of the intervention in this natural experiment and changes were required to the timeline and study design.

These study designs need to be scientifically robust, yet flexible enough to cope with unpredictable events and a changing environment that is outside the control of the researcher.

Identification of suitable controls:

Identification of a control site with similar characteristics to the intervention site (e.g. size, features, area level SES), with no planned changes over the study period was challenging.

Although challenging, an adequate control site is essential to ensure experimental design. It may be necessary to relax the control site criteria rather than have no control site.

Data collection:

Factors such as weather, staffing and special events impacted data collection scheduling.

To ensure data collection is unaffected, establish clear study protocols on cancelling observation days, staff schedules, and have contingency plans when these events occur.

Contingency budget:

Additional costs were incurred due to changes outside of the researcher’s control (e.g. changes in timelines and rescheduling of data collection due to poor weather).

Incorporate contingency funding into research budgets for natural experiments or alternatively, funders should allow researchers to apply for additional funding to support unanticipated changes outside of their control.

Timing of funding cycles:

The timing of the natural experiment was carefully planned to align with university/government funding cycles.

Researchers need to plan in advance to allow for long lead times before the commencement of interventions; however, funders could have flexible funding rounds to accommodate natural experiment evaluations.