VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, Health Services Research and Development Center for the Study of Healthcare Innovation, Implementation and Policy.
David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles.
Milbank Q. 2020 Jun;98(2):493-553. doi: 10.1111/1468-0009.12458. Epub 2020 May 19.
Policy Points Community-engaged research (CEnR) engenders meaningful academic-community partnerships to improve research quality and health outcomes. CEnR has increasingly been adopted by health care systems, funders, and communities looking for solutions to intractable problems. It has been difficult to systematically measure CEnR's impact, as most evaluations focus on project-specific outcomes. Similarly, partners have struggled with identifying appropriate measures to assess outcomes of interest. To make a case for CEnR's value, we must demonstrate the impacts of CEnR over time. We compiled recent measures and developed an interactive data visualization to facilitate more consistent measurement of CEnR's theoretical domains.
Community-engaged research (CEnR) aims to engender meaningful academic-community partnerships to increase research quality and impact, improve individual and community health, and build capacity for uptake of evidence-based practices. Given the urgency to solve society's pressing public health problems and increasing competition for funding, it is important to demonstrate CEnR's value. Most evaluations focus on project-specific outcomes, making it difficult to demonstrate CEnR's broader impact. Moreover, it is challenging for partnerships to identify assessments of interest beyond process measures. We conducted a mapping review to help partnerships find and select measures to evaluate CEnR projects and to characterize areas where further development of measures is needed.
We searched electronic bibliographic databases using relevant search terms from 2009 to 2018 and scanned CEnR projects to identify unpublished measures. Through review and reduction, we found 69 measures of CEnR's context, process, or outcomes that are potentially generalizable beyond a specific health condition or population. We abstracted data from descriptions of each measure to catalog purpose, aim (context, process, or outcome), and specific domains being measured.
We identified 28 measures of the conditions under which CEnR is conducted and factors to support effective academic-community collaboration (context); 43 measures evaluating constructs such as group dynamics and trust (process); and 43 measures of impacts such as benefits and challenges of CEnR participation and system and capacity changes (outcomes).
We found substantial variation in how academic-community partnerships conceptualize and define even similar domains. Achieving more consistency in how partnerships evaluate key constructs could reduce measurement confusion apparent in the literature. A hybrid approach whereby partnerships discuss common metrics and develop locally important measures can address CEnR's multiple goals. Our accessible data visualization serves as a convenient resource to support partnerships' evaluation goals and may help to build the evidence base for CEnR through the use of common measures across studies.
社区参与式研究（CEnR）通过建立有意义的学术-社区伙伴关系来提高研究质量和健康结果。CEnR 已经越来越多地被医疗保健系统、资助者和社区采用，以寻找解决棘手问题的方法。由于大多数评估都集中在项目特定的结果上，因此很难系统地衡量 CEnR 的影响。同样，合作伙伴也难以确定评估感兴趣结果的适当措施。为了证明 CEnR 的价值，我们必须随着时间的推移展示 CEnR 的影响。我们汇编了最近的措施，并开发了一个交互式数据可视化工具，以促进更一致地衡量 CEnR 的理论领域。
社区参与式研究（CEnR）旨在建立有意义的学术-社区伙伴关系，以提高研究质量和影响力，改善个人和社区的健康，并为采用基于证据的实践建立能力。鉴于解决社会紧迫的公共卫生问题的紧迫性和对资金竞争的加剧，证明 CEnR 的价值非常重要。大多数评估都集中在项目特定的结果上，因此很难证明 CEnR 的更广泛影响。此外，合作伙伴很难确定除了过程措施之外的感兴趣的评估。我们进行了一次映射审查，以帮助合作伙伴找到和选择评估 CEnR 项目的措施，并描述需要进一步开发措施的领域。
我们使用 2009 年至 2018 年的相关搜索词在电子书目数据库中进行了搜索，并对 CEnR 项目进行了扫描，以确定未发表的措施。通过审查和简化，我们找到了 69 种衡量 CEnR 背景、过程或结果的措施，这些措施可能具有超越特定健康状况或人群的普遍性。我们从每个措施的描述中提取数据，以编目其目的、目标（背景、过程或结果）和正在测量的特定领域。
我们确定了 28 种衡量 CEnR 进行条件和支持有效学术-社区合作因素的措施（背景）；43 种评估群体动态和信任等结构的措施（过程）；以及 43 种衡量 CEnR 参与和系统及能力变化的影响的措施（结果）。
我们发现，即使是相似的领域，学术-社区伙伴关系在概念化和定义方面也存在很大差异。通过在伙伴关系中评估关键结构的方式实现更大的一致性，可以减少文献中明显的衡量混淆。一种混合方法，即伙伴关系讨论共同指标并制定当地重要措施，可以解决 CEnR 的多个目标。我们易于访问的数据可视化工具可用作支持伙伴关系评估目标的便利资源，并通过在研究中使用共同措施来帮助建立 CEnR 的证据基础。
