Clinical Epidemiology Unit, Department of Medicine, School of Medicine, College of Health Sciences, Makerere University, P.O. Box 7072, Kampala, Uganda.
Faculty of Epidemiology and Population Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, United Kingdom.
Health Res Policy Syst. 2018 Aug 3;16(1):77. doi: 10.1186/s12961-018-0343-8.
World over, stakeholders are increasingly concerned about making research useful in public policy-making. However, there are hardly any reports linking production of research by students at institutions of higher learning to its application in society. We assessed whether and how post-graduate students' research was used in evidence-informed health policies.
This is a multiple case study of master's students' dissertations at Makerere University College of Health Sciences (MakCHS) produced between 1996 and 2010. In a structured review, we applied a theoretical framework of 'research use' and used content analysis to map how research was used in public policy documents. We categorised content of these documents according to the health-related Millennium Development Goals (MDG). We defined a case of 'use' as citation of research products from a master's student's dissertation in a public policy-related document.
We found 22 cases of research use in policy-related documents (0.5%) out of a total 4230 citations from 16 of 1172 total dissertations (1.4%). Additionally, research was mostly cited in primary studies (95.4%), systematic reviews (3%), narrative reviews (0.8%) and cost-effectiveness analyses (0.2%). Research was predominantly used instrumentally, to either frame the problem (burden of disease or health condition) or select an intervention (treatment or diagnostic option) and rarely symbolically to justify strategies already selected. The bulk of the cases of research use addressed child health (MDG 4), focusing on infectious diseases (MDG 6), mainly in international clinical or public health guidelines, working papers, a consensus statement and a global report. We distilled 'synergistic relationships' among organisations or interest groups, 'globalisation of local evidence', 'trade-offs' in the use of research and use of 'negative results' from the documents and text content.
Research from dissertations of post-graduate students at MakCHS is used in evidence-informed health policies, particularly for infectious diseases in child health. Further, we have delineated pathways of research use in the global arena and highlighted the importance of 'negative results' from dissertations of post-graduate students at MakCHS.
在世界范围内，利益相关者越来越关注使研究成果能够应用于公共决策制定。然而，几乎没有任何报告将高等学府学生的研究成果与其在社会中的应用联系起来。我们评估了研究生的研究成果是否以及如何应用于循证卫生政策。
这是对 1996 年至 2010 年间在马凯雷雷大学健康科学学院（MakCHS）完成的硕士论文进行的多项案例研究。在一项结构化综述中，我们应用了“研究使用”的理论框架，并采用内容分析法来绘制研究在公共政策文件中的使用情况。我们根据与卫生相关的千年发展目标（MDG）对这些文件的内容进行了分类。我们将“使用”的案例定义为在与公共政策相关的文件中引用硕士论文的研究成果。
我们在与政策相关的文件中发现了 22 个研究使用案例（0.5%），这是从 16 篇论文中的 1172 篇论文的 4230 次引用中得出的（1.4%）。此外，研究主要被引用在原始研究（95.4%）、系统评价（3%）、叙述性综述（0.8%）和成本效益分析（0.2%）中。研究主要被工具性地使用，用于构建问题框架（疾病负担或健康状况）或选择干预措施（治疗或诊断选择），很少象征性地用于证明已经选择的策略。研究使用的大部分案例都涉及儿童健康（MDG 4），重点关注传染病（MDG 6），主要出现在国际临床或公共卫生指南、工作文件、共识声明和全球报告中。我们从文件和文本内容中提炼出了组织或利益集团之间的“协同关系”、“地方证据的全球化”、“研究使用中的权衡”以及“来自论文的负面结果”。
马凯雷雷大学健康科学学院硕士论文的研究成果应用于循证卫生政策，特别是在儿童健康的传染病领域。此外，我们还描绘了全球范围内研究使用的途径，并强调了马凯雷雷大学健康科学学院硕士论文的负面结果的重要性。
