Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research, World Health Organization, 1211 Geneva 27, Geneva, Switzerland.
Implement Sci. 2014 Jun 2;9:67. doi: 10.1186/1748-5908-9-67.
The growing recognition of the importance of concisely communicating research evidence and other policy-relevant information to policymakers has underpinned the development of several information-packaging efforts over the past decade. This has led to a wide variability in the types of documents produced, which is at best confusing and at worst discouraging for those they intend to reach. This paper has two main objectives: to develop a better understanding of the range of documents and document names used by the organizations preparing them; and to assess whether there are any consistencies in the characteristics of sampled documents across the names employed to label (in the title) or describe (in the document or website) them.
We undertook a documentary analysis of web-published document series that are prepared by a variety of organizations with the primary intention of providing information to health systems policymakers and stakeholders, and addressing questions related to health policy and health systems with a focus on low- and middle-income countries. No time limit was set.
In total, 109 individual documents from 24 series produced by 16 different organizations were included. The name 'policy brief/briefing' was the most frequently used (39%) to label or describe a document, and was used in all eight broad content areas that we identified, even though they did not have obviously common traits among them. In terms of document characteristics, most documents (90%) used skimmable formats that are easy to read, with understandable, jargon-free, language (80%). Availability of information on the methods (47%) or the quality of the presented evidence (27%) was less common. One-third (32%) chose the topic based on an explicit process to assess the demand for information from policy makers and even fewer (19%) engaged with policymakers to discuss the content of these documents such as through merit review.
This study highlights the need for organizations embarking on future information-packaging efforts to be more thoughtful when deciding how to name these documents and the need for greater transparency in describing their content, purpose and intended audience.
越来越多的人认识到，向决策者简明扼要地传达研究证据和其他与政策相关的信息至关重要，这为过去十年中开展的多项信息包装工作提供了支持。这导致所制作文件的类型差异很大，对于那些希望接触到的人来说，这种情况最好是令人困惑，最坏是令人沮丧。本文有两个主要目标：一是更好地了解编写这些文件的组织所使用的文件类型和文件名称；二是评估在用于标记（标题中）或描述（文件或网站中）它们的名称中，样本文件的特征是否存在任何一致性。
我们对各种组织编写的网络发布文件系列进行了文献分析，这些组织编写这些文件的主要目的是向卫生系统决策者和利益攸关方提供信息，并解决与卫生政策和卫生系统相关的问题，重点关注中低收入国家。没有设定时间限制。
共纳入了 16 个不同组织编写的 24 个系列中的 109 份独立文件。“政策简报/简报”是最常用的标签（39%）或描述文件的名称，并且用于我们确定的所有八个广泛的内容领域，即使它们之间没有明显的共同特征。就文件特征而言，大多数文件（90%）使用易于阅读的可略读格式，使用易懂、无行话的语言（80%）。提供有关方法（47%）或所呈现证据质量（27%）的信息则不太常见。三分之一（32%）的人根据明确的程序选择主题，以评估决策者对信息的需求，甚至更少（19%）的人与决策者接触，讨论这些文件的内容，例如通过优点审查。
本研究强调了从事未来信息包装工作的组织在决定如何命名这些文件时需要更加深思熟虑，并需要在描述其内容、目的和预期受众时更加透明。
