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. 2022 Dec 5;10(12):2458.
doi: 10.3390/healthcare10122458.

Analysing Researchers' Engagement in Research Hospitals: A Pilot Study in IRCCS-Italian Research Hospitals

Giulia Mollica  1 , Rosario Caruso  2   3 , Gianluca Conte  3 , Federico Ambrogi  4   5 , Sara Boveri  5
Affiliations

Analysing Researchers' Engagement in Research Hospitals: A Pilot Study in IRCCS-Italian Research Hospitals

Giulia Mollica et al. Healthcare (Basel). .

Abstract

Despite universities in the UK, USA and Australia having developed tools and strategies to enhance academic engagement, there is a paucity of information from universities and research hospitals where conceptual and theoretical research still appears more heterogeneous. In Italy, there is a growing recognition that more needs to be done to define strategies to improve research engagement. Italian research hospitals are represented by the Scientific Institute for Research, Hospitalization and Healthcare (named IRCCS from the Italian acronym of these organisations), representing the best of Italian research and the National Health Service System. This article provided a pilot description of research engagement in a representative Italian IRCCS hospital for the first time. A pilot study was developed, and a brief questionnaire was validated to explore research engagement. The identified clusters of researchers' engagement were provided to describe an initial theory-grounded framework. Based on the perspective of research administrators and the Ministry of Health during round tables, the developed questionnaire identified two clusters of researchers' engagement and measured "Project-oriented" and "Organisation-oriented" engagement. Among the responders, IRCCS senior researchers tended to have higher project-oriented engagement, while young researchers had slightly higher organisation-oriented engagement. The contribution of this article is a hypothesised two-level theory-grounded framework to study and improve research engagement activities and strategies in a research hospital, with the potential for an overlap with other European research institutions.

Keywords: organisation science; qualitative methods; research engagement; research hospitals; surveys.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The three-phase design of the study, including the questionnaire design and recommendations to develop self-report questionnaires.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Hierarchical clustering tree based on survey answers and showing the similarity of responders in two different clusters.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Mean and standard deviation of scores for “Project-oriented engagement” and “Organisation-oriented engagement” of two clusters.
Figure 4
Figure 4
The proposed theory-grounded framework.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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