volleyball outside doublewide at SCRMThis summer I attended the 11th Annual NIH Institute on Randomized Controlled Trials for Behavioral Interventions for 2 weeks in Warrenton, VA and the NSF Short Course in Research Methods – Text Analysis for 1 week at DUML in Beaufort, NC. Aside from getting a lot of needed exercise on the volleyball court, both trainings were very valuable short courses and I strongly recommend both of them (although the latter is only open to anthropologists). For the NIH Institute, one of the most valuable modules for junior investigators related to the function of pilot studies. There was an article by Leon (2011) that argues that we should not be using pilot studies to generate effect sizes for larger RCTs such as would be funded by an R01.  I am using the reference in an R21 I am revising for resubmission. Delia West gave an energetic presentation on retention and recruitment in clinical trials that was very helpful also. Regarding the SCRM, it was my third course, and I find these courses extremely valuable for teaching research methods and for thinking about my own research. I am now a complete convert to MAXQDA, and I know we all look forward to Lance Gravlee’s next web tutorial for teaching purposes.