eprintid: 10205955
rev_number: 6
eprint_status: archive
userid: 699
dir: disk0/10/20/59/55
datestamp: 2025-03-12 10:37:39
lastmod: 2025-03-12 10:37:39
status_changed: 2025-03-12 10:37:39
type: article
metadata_visibility: show
sword_depositor: 699
creators_name: Wright, Alison J
creators_name: Finnerty Mutlu, Ailbhe N
creators_name: Norris, Emma
creators_name: Marques, Marta M
creators_name: Hastings, Janna
creators_name: West, Robert
creators_name: Michie, Susan
title: Development of an Intervention Population Ontology for specifying the characteristics of intervention participants
ispublished: pub
divisions: UCL
divisions: B02
divisions: C07
divisions: D05
divisions: D12
divisions: F66
divisions: J96
keywords: Ontology, human populations, intervention, behavioural science, reproducibility of results
note: Copyright: © 2025 Wright AJ et al. This is an open access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
abstract: Background:
The uptake, effectiveness and generalisability of interventions are influenced by the features of the populations targeted. However, populations exposed to interventions are not consistently specified in published reports.  

Purpose:
To create an Intervention Population Ontology providing a clear, usable and reliable classification system to specify characteristics of populations exposed to interventions.

Methods:
The Intervention Population Ontology was developed in seven main stages 1) Defining the ontology’s scope, (2) identifying key entities by reviewing existing classification systems (top-down) and 100 intervention reports (bottom-up), 3) Refining the preliminary ontology by annotating ~150 intervention reports, 4) Stakeholder review by 29 behavioural science and public health experts, 5) Assessing inter-rater reliability of using the ontology by two coders familiar with the ontology and two coders unfamiliar with it, 6) Specifying ontological relationships between entities in the ontology and 7) making the Intervention Population Ontology machine-readable using Web Ontology Language (OWL) and publishing online. 

Results:
The Intervention Population Ontology features 218 entities representing attributes of human individuals across 12 key groupings: personal attributes, geographic location, person, quality, mental capability, role, expertise, objects possessed, behaviour, personal vulnerability and personal history. It has a further 666 classes relating to how individual-level attributes are aggregated to describe groups of people. Inter-rater reliability was α=0.79 for coders familiar with the ontology and 0.85 for coders unfamiliar with the ontology.

Conclusions:
The Intervention Population Ontology can be applied to specify precisely information from diverse sources, annotate population characteristics in existing intervention evaluation reports and guide future reporting.
date: 2025-03-05
date_type: published
publisher: F1000 Research Ltd
official_url: https://doi.org/10.12688/wellcomeopenres.22788.1
oa_status: green
full_text_type: pub
language: eng
primo: open
primo_central: open_green
verified: verified_manual
elements_id: 2368723
doi: 10.12688/wellcomeopenres.22788.1
lyricists_name: Wright, Alison
lyricists_name: Michie, Susan
lyricists_name: West, Robert
lyricists_id: AWRIG61
lyricists_id: SFMIC21
lyricists_id: RJWES36
actors_name: Michie, Susan
actors_name: Massoura, Amelia
actors_id: SFMIC21
actors_id: AMASS35
actors_role: owner
actors_role: impersonator
full_text_status: public
publication: Wellcome Open Research
volume: 10
article_number: 122
issn: 2398-502X
citation:        Wright, Alison J;    Finnerty Mutlu, Ailbhe N;    Norris, Emma;    Marques, Marta M;    Hastings, Janna;    West, Robert;    Michie, Susan;      (2025)    Development of an Intervention Population Ontology for specifying the characteristics of intervention participants.                   Wellcome Open Research , 10     , Article 122.  10.12688/wellcomeopenres.22788.1 <https://doi.org/10.12688/wellcomeopenres.22788.1>.       Green open access   
 
document_url: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10205955/1/cded3a29-7731-4f38-90b5-b9a06c3c0524_22788_-_alison_j_wright.pdf