Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2022 Dec;11(18):1313-1321.
doi: 10.2217/cer-2022-0158. Epub 2022 Nov 15.

An evaluation of stakeholder engagement in comparative effectiveness research: lessons learned from SWOG S1415CD

Ari Bell-Brown  1 , Kate Watabayashi  1 , Karma Kreizenbeck  1 , Scott D Ramsey  1 , Aasthaa Bansal  1   2 , William E Barlow  1   3 , Gary H Lyman  1   4 , Dawn L Hershman  5 , Anne Marie Mercurio  6 , Barbara Segarra-Vazquez  7 , Florence Kurttila  6 , Jamie S Myers  8 , John D Golenski  9 , Judy Johnson  6 , Robert L Erwin  10 , Guneet Walia  11 , Jeffrey Crawford  12 , Sean D Sullivan  2
Affiliations

An evaluation of stakeholder engagement in comparative effectiveness research: lessons learned from SWOG S1415CD

Ari Bell-Brown et al. J Comp Eff Res. 2022 Dec.

Abstract

Aim: Stakeholder engagement is central to comparative effectiveness research yet there are gaps in definitions of success. We used a framework developed by Lavallee et al. defining effective engagement criteria to evaluate stakeholder engagement during a pragmatic cluster-randomized trial. Methods: Semi-structured interviews were developed from the framework and completed to learn about members' experiences. Interviews were analyzed in a deductive approach for themes related to the effective engagement criteria. Results: Thirteen members participated and described: respect for ideas, time to achieve consensus, access to information and continuous feedback as areas of effective engagement. The primary criticism was lack of diversity. Discussion: Feedback was positive, particularly among themes of respect, trust and competence, and led to development of a list of best practices for engagement. The framework was successful for evaluating engagement. Conclusion: Standardized frameworks allow studies to formally evaluate their stakeholder engagement approach and develop best practices for future research.

Keywords: comparative effectiveness research; pragmatic trial; stakeholder engagement; stakeholder evaluation.

Plain language summary

What is this article about? This article is about the evaluation of how effective the stakeholder engagement was in a comparative effectiveness research (CER) study funded by the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). The research team found a framework (developed by Lavalle et al.) that defined six different criteria for effective stakeholder engagement, and used that criteria to complete semi-structured interviews with the stakeholders involved with our study. These interviews were reviewed to determine what stakeholder engagement processes were successful and helped provide a list of best practices for stakeholder engagement for other researchers doing CER. What were the results? Stakeholders highlighted respect for their ideas, time to achieve consensus, easy access to information and a continuous feedback loop between study team and stakeholders as effective engagement processes. What do the results mean? These results can help other researchers doing CER learn best practices to implement from the outset of a study to best engage stakeholders in their research. The results also show that having a standardized framework to evaluate stakeholder engagement is important and allows for research teams to formally evaluate their engagement approach and learn what was successful and where there are areas for improvement in future studies.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.. External Stakeholder Advisory Group impact on research activities and conduct.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute. Research we support (2021). www.pcori.org/research/about-our-research/research-we-support
    1. Sox HC, Greenfield S. Comparative effectiveness research: a report from the Institute of Medicine. Ann. Intern. Med. 151(3), 203–205 (2009). - PubMed
    1. Selby JV, Beal AC, Frank L. The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) national priorities for research and initial research agenda. JAMA 307(15), 1583–1584 (2012). - PubMed
    1. Esmail L, Moore E, Rein A. Evaluating patient and stakeholder engagement in research: moving from theory to practice. J. Comp. Eff. Res. 4(2), 133–145 (2015). - PubMed
    1. Martinez J, Wong C, Piersol CV, Bieber DC, Perry BL, Leland NE. Stakeholder engagement in research: a scoping review of current evaluation methods. J. Comp. Eff. Res. 8(15), 1327–1341 (2019). - PubMed

Publication types

MeSH terms

LinkOut - more resources