Health Economics Research Unit, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK.
Department of Primary Care & Mental Health, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK.
Health Expect. 2023 Feb;26(1):146-159. doi: 10.1111/hex.13641. Epub 2022 Nov 6.
Covid-19 expanded the use of remote working to engage with public contributors in health and social care research. These changes have the potential to limit the ability to participate in patient and public involvement and engagement (PPIE) for some public contributors. It is therefore important to understand public contributors' preferences, so that remote working can be organized in an optimal way to encourage rather than discourage participation.
We use an economic preference elicitation tool, a discrete choice experiment (DCE), via an online survey, to estimate public contributors' preferences for and trade-offs between different features of remote meetings. The features were informed by previous research to include aspects of remote meetings that were relevant to public contributors and amenable to change by PPIE organizers.
We found that public contributors are more likely to participate in a PPIE project involving remote meetings if they are given feedback about participation; allowed to switch their camera off during meetings and step away if/when needed; were under 2.5 h long; organized during working hours, and are chaired by a moderator who can ensure that everyone contributes. Different combinations of these features can cause estimated project participation to range from 23% to 94%. When planning PPIE and engaging public contributors, we suggest that resources are focused on training moderators and ensuring public contributors receive meeting feedback.
Project resources should be allocated to maximize project participation. We provide recommendations for those who work in public involvement and organize meetings on how resources, such as time and financial support, should be allocated. These are based on the preferences of existing public contributors who have been involved in health and social care research.
We had a public contributor (Naheed Tahir) as a funded coapplicant on the UKRI ESRC application and involved members of the North West Coast Applied Research Collaboration (NWC ARC) Public Advisor Forum at every stage of the project. The survey design was informed from three focus groups held with NWC ARC public contributors. The survey was further edited and improved based on the results of six one-to-one meetings with public contributors.
Covid-19 扩大了远程工作的使用范围，以让公众参与到医疗和社会保健研究中。这些变化有可能限制一些公众参与者参与患者和公众参与和参与（PPIE）的能力。因此，了解公众参与者的偏好是很重要的，以便以最佳方式组织远程工作，以鼓励而不是阻碍参与。
我们使用经济偏好 elicitation 工具，即通过在线调查进行的离散选择实验（DCE），来估计公众参与者对远程会议的不同特征的偏好和权衡。这些特征是根据先前的研究得出的，包括与公众参与者相关且 PPIE 组织者可改变的远程会议方面。
我们发现，如果公众参与者在参与远程会议时获得反馈，允许他们在会议期间关闭摄像头并在需要时离开，会议时长不超过 2.5 小时，在工作时间内组织会议，并且由能够确保每个人都参与的主持人主持，他们更有可能参与涉及远程会议的 PPIE 项目。这些特征的不同组合可以导致估计的项目参与率从 23%到 94%不等。在规划 PPIE 和吸引公众参与者时，我们建议将资源集中在培训主持人和确保公众参与者获得会议反馈上。
应分配项目资源以最大程度地提高项目参与度。我们为参与健康和社会保健研究的现有公众参与者提供了关于如何分配资源（如时间和财务支持）的建议。这些建议基于公众参与者的偏好。
我们有一位公众参与者（Naheed Tahir）作为 UKRI ESRC 申请的受资助共同申请人，并在项目的每个阶段都让西北海岸应用研究合作组织（NWC ARC）公共顾问论坛的成员参与。调查设计是根据与 NWC ARC 公众参与者举行的三次焦点小组会议得出的。根据与公众参与者进行的六次一对一会议的结果，对调查进行了进一步编辑和改进。
