Dataset Information

How to engage stakeholders in research: design principles to support improvement.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Closing the gap between research production and research use is a key challenge for the health research system. Stakeholder engagement is being increasingly promoted across the board by health research funding organisations, and indeed by many researchers themselves, as an important pathway to achieving impact. This opinion piece draws on a study of stakeholder engagement in research and a systematic literature search conducted as part of the study.

Main body

This paper provides a short conceptualisation of stakeholder engagement, followed by 'design principles' that we put forward based on a combination of existing literature and new empirical insights from our recently completed longitudinal study of stakeholder engagement. The design principles for stakeholder engagement are organised into three groups, namely organisational, values and practices. The organisational principles are to clarify the objectives of stakeholder engagement; embed stakeholder engagement in a framework or model of research use; identify the necessary resources for stakeholder engagement; put in place plans for organisational learning and rewarding of effective stakeholder engagement; and to recognise that some stakeholders have the potential to play a key role. The principles relating to values are to foster shared commitment to the values and objectives of stakeholder engagement in the project team; share understanding that stakeholder engagement is often about more than individuals; encourage individual stakeholders and their organisations to value engagement; recognise potential tension between productivity and inclusion; and to generate a shared commitment to sustained and continuous stakeholder engagement. Finally, in terms of practices, the principles suggest that it is important to plan stakeholder engagement activity as part of the research programme of work; build flexibility within the research process to accommodate engagement and the outcomes of engagement; consider how input from stakeholders can be gathered systematically to meet objectives; consider how input from stakeholders can be collated, analysed and used; and to recognise that identification and involvement of stakeholders is an iterative and ongoing process.

Conclusion

It is anticipated that the principles will be useful in planning stakeholder engagement activity within research programmes and in monitoring and evaluating stakeholder engagement. A next step will be to address the remaining gap in the stakeholder engagement literature concerned with how we assess the impact of stakeholder engagement on research use.

SUBMITTER: Boaz A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6042393 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

How to engage stakeholders in research: design principles to support improvement.

Boaz Annette A Hanney Stephen S Borst Robert R O'Shea Alison A Kok Maarten M

Health research policy and systems 20180711 1

<h4>Background</h4>Closing the gap between research production and research use is a key challenge for the health research system. Stakeholder engagement is being increasingly promoted across the board by health research funding organisations, and indeed by many researchers themselves, as an important pathway to achieving impact. This opinion piece draws on a study of stakeholder engagement in research and a systematic literature search conducted as part of the study.<h4>Main body</h4>This paper ...[more]

PMID: 29996848

Similar Datasets

Project description:Our objective was to implement a directorate research strategy to improve and grow clinical academic capacity and capability and ensure that the organisational systems and processes enabled clinical staff and managers to increase grant capture, undertake clinically relevant research, including the adoption of NIHR portfolio sites and established a culture in which research was an accepted part of professional practice. An initial evaluation of senior and middle manager attitudes and understanding of the research infrastructure and benefits of research identified that the directorate had a deeply segmented view of research and only a partial view of how research could benefit patients and improve their services. A significant number of staff claimed to be research active but this activity was not contributing to the service knowledge or being translated into grant capture, leading to income that could be used to invest in patient facing research. Few managers had appreciated the challenge of implementing the research strategy or the potential of enabling research active staff to generate clinical academic careers. A quality improvement methodology was adopted, based on four equally important elements [1]; involving people (staff and patients) in research, developing people's research knowledge and skills, promoting an understanding of the complex systems and processes associated with research, and using an organisational research strategy with leadership to drive change. This improvement method suggests an equal and proportional range of activity to engage staff, amend and adapt processes and systems, carry out organisational change and "make it a habit". The improvement measures were selected by a number of managers who acted as "research champions" and shared these with all staff across the directorate; the focus was on delivering sustained improvements in performance targets agreed with the organisation. The interventions were introduced to assist managers in each professional group to champion research and undertake the organisational change that would be needed. The two cycles of improvement over 14 months were used to achieve "academic status" within the organisation, to include clinical staff in the delivery of the research strategy and to create a clinical academic infrastructure that incorporated a well organised public and patient involvement (PPI) panel. Additional measures included the level of participation of clinical academic staff in grant capture and the level of income from research to sustain the growth in activity.

Dataset Information

How to engage stakeholders in research: design principles to support improvement.

Background

Main body

Conclusion

Publications

How to engage stakeholders in research: design principles to support improvement.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets