RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, CA, USA.
Department of Population and Public Health Sciences, University of Southern California Gehr Family Center for Health Systems Science & Innovation, Los Angeles, USA.
J Gen Intern Med. 2022 Jan;37(1):198-205. doi: 10.1007/s11606-021-07064-1. Epub 2021 Nov 8.
Well-defined, systematic, and transparent processes to identify health research gaps, needs, and priorities are vital to ensuring that available funds target areas with the greatest potential for impact.
The purpose of this review is to characterize methods conducted or supported by research funding organizations to identify health research gaps, needs, or priorities.
We searched MEDLINE, PsycINFO, and the Web of Science up to September 2019. Eligible studies reported on methods to identify health research gaps, needs, and priorities that had been conducted or supported by research funding organizations. Using a published protocol, we extracted data on the method, criteria, involvement of stakeholders, evaluations, and whether the method had been replicated (i.e., used in other studies).
Among 10,832 citations, 167 studies were eligible for full data extraction. More than half of the studies employed methods to identify both needs and priorities, whereas about a quarter of studies focused singularly on identifying gaps (7%), needs (6%), or priorities (14%) only. The most frequently used methods were the convening of workshops or meetings (37%), quantitative methods (32%), and the James Lind Alliance approach, a multi-stakeholder research needs and priority setting process (28%). The most widely applied criteria were importance to stakeholders (72%), potential value (29%), and feasibility (18%). Stakeholder involvement was most prominent among clinicians (69%), researchers (66%), and patients and the public (59%). Stakeholders were identified through stakeholder organizations (51%) and purposive (26%) and convenience sampling (11%). Only 4% of studies evaluated the effectiveness of the methods and 37% employed methods that were reproducible and used in other studies.
To ensure optimal targeting of funds to meet the greatest areas of need and maximize outcomes, a much more robust evidence base is needed to ascertain the effectiveness of methods used to identify research gaps, needs, and priorities.
明确、系统和透明的流程对于确定健康研究差距、需求和优先事项至关重要，这可以确保现有的资金能够瞄准最有潜力产生影响的领域。
本综述的目的是描述研究资助机构用于确定健康研究差距、需求或优先事项的方法。
我们检索了 MEDLINE、PsycINFO 和 Web of Science，截至 2019 年 9 月。符合条件的研究报告了由研究资助机构开展或支持的用于确定健康研究差距、需求和优先事项的方法。我们使用已发表的方案，提取了有关方法、标准、利益相关者参与、评估以及该方法是否被复制（即在其他研究中使用）的数据。
在 10832 条引文中，有 167 项研究符合全文数据提取标准。超过一半的研究采用了识别需求和优先事项的方法，而约四分之一的研究仅侧重于识别差距（7%）、需求（6%）或优先事项（14%）。最常使用的方法是召开研讨会或会议（37%）、定量方法（32%）以及詹姆斯林德联盟方法，这是一种多利益相关者研究需求和优先事项设定过程（28%）。最广泛应用的标准是对利益相关者的重要性（72%）、潜在价值（29%）和可行性（18%）。利益相关者的参与最为突出的是临床医生（69%）、研究人员（66%）和患者及公众（59%）。利益相关者是通过利益相关者组织（51%）和有针对性的（26%）和方便抽样（11%）确定的。只有 4%的研究评估了方法的有效性，37%的研究使用了可复制的方法，并在其他研究中使用。
为了确保资金的最佳定向以满足最大的需求领域并最大限度地提高成果，需要一个更强大的证据基础来确定用于确定研究差距、需求和优先事项的方法的有效性。
