For almost fifteen years, the availability and regulatory acceptance of new approach methodologies (NAMs) to assess the absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion (ADME/biokinetics) in chemical risk evaluations are a bottleneck. To enhance the field, a team of 24 experts from science, industry, and regulatory bodies, including new generation toxicologists, met at the Lorentz Centre in Leiden, The Netherlands. A range of possibilities for the use of NAMs for biokinetics in risk evaluations were formulated (for example to define species differences and human variation or to perform quantitative in vitro-in vivo extrapolations). To increase the regulatory use and acceptance of NAMs for biokinetics for these ADME considerations within risk evaluations, the development of test guidelines (protocols) and of overarching guidance documents is considered a critical step. To this end, a need for an expert group on biokinetics within the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to supervise this process was formulated. The workshop discussions revealed that method development is still required, particularly to adequately capture transporter mediated processes as well as to obtain cell models that reflect the physiology and kinetic characteristics of relevant organs. Developments in the fields of stem cells, organoids and organ-on-a-chip models provide promising tools to meet these research needs in the future.
MULTIFILE
In childhood studies, the importance of including the perspectives of children and young people from a first-hand approach has been raised. Qualitative methods are suitable for doing so. However, usually most frequently used qualitative methods, such as interviews or focus groups, are not suitable for younger children, due to their developing verbal resources.Introducing methodological innovations, like non-verbal methods and relational analysis, among others, could help researchers include their views and access their meanings. In this course, we will discuss the main issues in qualitative research, with special consideration of the ones that could help incorporate children's perspectives. This course will be based on discussion, triggered by the reading of texts, the research experience of the professor (mainly with children and adolescents undergoing psychotherapy due to sexual abuse experiences), and the participants’ PhD projects.
In the course of our supervisory work over the years, we have noticed that qualitative research tends to evoke a lot of questions and worries, so-called frequently asked questions (FAQs). This series of four articles intends to provide novice researchers with practical guidance for conducting high-quality qualitative research in primary care. By ‘novice’ we mean Master’s students and junior researchers, as well as experienced quantitative researchers who are engaging in qualitative research for the first time. This series addresses their questions and provides researchers, readers, reviewers and editors with references to criteria and tools for judging the quality of qualitative research papers. The second article focused on context, research questions and designs, and referred to publications for further reading. This third article addresses FAQs about sampling, data collection and analysis. The data collection plan needs to be broadly defined and open at first, and become flexible during data collection. Sampling strategies should be chosen in such a way that they yield rich information and are consistent with the methodological approach used. Data saturation determines sample size and will be different for each study. The most commonly used data collection methods are participant observation, face-to-face in-depth interviews and focus group discussions. Analyses in ethnographic, phenomenological, grounded theory, and content analysis studies yield different narrative findings: a detailed description of a culture, the essence of the lived experience, a theory, and a descriptive summary, respectively. The fourth and final article will focus on trustworthiness and publishing qualitative research.
DISTENDER will provide integrated strategies by building a methodological framework that guide the integration of climate change(CC) adaptation and mitigation strategies through participatory approaches in ways that respond to the impacts and risks of climatechange (CC), supported by quantitative and qualitative analysis that facilitates the understanding of interactions, synergies and tradeoffs.Holistic approaches to mitigation and adaptation must be tailored to the context-specific situation and this requires a flexibleand participatory planning process to ensure legitimate and salient action, carried out by all important stakeholders. DISTENDER willdevelop a set of multi-driver qualitative and quantitative socio-economic-climate scenarios through a facilitated participatory processthat integrates bottom-up knowledge and locally-relevant drivers with top-down information from the global European SharedSocioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) and downscaled Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) from IPCC. A cross-sectorial andmulti-scale impact assessment modelling toolkit will be developed to analyse the complex interactions over multiple sectors,including an economic evaluation framework. The economic impact of the different efforts will be analyse, including damage claimsettlement and how do sectoral activity patterns change under various scenarios considering indirect and cascading effects. It is aninnovative project combining three key concepts: cross-scale, integration/harmonization and robustness checking. DISTENDER willfollow a pragmatic approach applying methodologies and toolkits across a range of European case studies (six core case studies andfive followers) that reflect a cross-section of the challenges posed by CC adaptation and mitigation. The knowledge generated byDISTENDER will be offered by a Decision Support System (DSS) which will include guidelines, manuals, easy-to-use tools andexperiences from the application of the cases studies.
