1. Why do you need 125,000 in the study?
This is the number calculated to provide meaningful results with confidence over about six years of follow up. If we had a smaller group it would take relatively longer to obtain the same results. Of course well be happy to have more than 125,000 in the study.
2. How long will the study continue?
This is a long-term study. The initial 5 years of funding ends in 2006. During this period the important work of enrolling the members and collecting the baseline lifestyle data takes place. We then expect to receive another 5 years' of funding to mainly ascertain health outcomes and disease events in our population. But the study has the potential to go on for 15 or 20 years and make important contributions in many areas of health.
3. Besides completing the big questionnaire, what else is involved in the study?
That is the major contribution we ask of you. But every two years we will send you a very brief questionnaire to list any hospitalizations you may have had and any major changes in health.
One thousand responders will be randomly selected to participate in the Support Sub-study to help validate our questionnaire. Another small group will be invited to take part in a Church Clinic Pilot Study to test the feasibility of extending church clinics to the whole group.
4. Where does the money come from?
All money for the study is a grant from the National Cancer Institute, a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that funds all kinds of major health and medical research in the U.S. These are your tax dollars working to benefit the population.
There are rigorous accounting procedures for all expenditures. While Loma Linda University and the Seventh-day Adventist Church support the project in many ways they give no direct money for the study.
5. Why is the questionnaire so long?
Actually there are some questionnaires much longer! But we wanted to strike a balance between not over burdening the responder and collecting the detail necessary to make this perhaps the best large population study of diet and cancer.
All questions have been tested before and are considered important in answering our research questions.
Some people take as little as an hour to answer the survey. Others may take over three hours. The average is about two hours.
6. There are many questions on diet. What about other factors such as relationships, faith, Sabbath, environment, and stress, etc.?
These other factors are important and we plan to measure them in the future with smaller numbers of people from our total study population. Our major interest at the moment is on the relationship of various foods and cancer. We and our funding agency, the National Cancer Institute, want to make sure this is covered well. Researchers estimate that 40% of cancers are diet related and could be prevented. Our original draft questionnaire did include many other questions but in the interest of length, these were left out for the time being.
7. Why can't members younger than 30 join the study?
Younger people tend to be more mobile and therefore are difficult to keep track of over the years of follow up. Moreover, the health outcomes of interest for this study are mostly related to older ages.
8. Why do you require people to be 'fluent' in English?
By "fluent' we mean being able to read, understand and answer a relatively complex questionnaire in English. Some people who have English as their second language may find this difficult. At this stage we do not have funding to translate the questionnaire and necessary materials to conduct the study in other languages.
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Last Revised: Tue, Oct 30, 2007
