School of Medicine and Public Health, College of Health, Medicine and Wellbeing, University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW, 2308, Australia.
Hunter Medical Research Institute, Newcastle, NSW, 2305, Australia.
Health Res Policy Syst. 2023 Nov 27;21(1):121. doi: 10.1186/s12961-023-01066-7.
Understanding the views of policy-makers and practitioners regarding how best to communicate research evidence is important to support research use in their decision-making.
To quantify and describe public health policy-makers and practitioners' views regarding the source, content and form of messages describing public health research findings to inform their decision-making. We also sought to examine differences in preferences between public health policy-makers and practitioners.
A cross sectional, value-weighting survey of policy-makers and practitioners was conducted. Participants were asked to allocate a proportion of 100 points across different (i) sources of research evidence, (ii) message content and (iii) the form in which evidence is presented. Points were allocated based on their rating of influence, usefulness and preference when making decisions about health policy or practice.
A total of 186 survey responses were received from 90 policy-makers and 96 practitioners. Researchers and government department agencies were the most influential source of research evidence based on mean allocation of points, followed by knowledge brokers, professional peers and associations. Mean point allocation for perceived usefulness of message content was highest for simple summary of key findings and implications, and then evidence-based recommendations and data and statistical summaries. Finally, based on mean scores, policy-makers and practitioners preferred to receive research evidence in the form of peer-reviewed publications, reports, evidence briefs and plain language summaries. There were few differences in scores between policy-makers and practitioners across source, message content or form assessments or those with experience in different behavioural areas.
The findings should provide a basis for the future development and optimization of dissemination strategies to this important stakeholder group.
了解政策制定者和实践者对于如何最好地传达研究证据的观点，对于支持他们在决策中使用研究至关重要。
定量描述和描述公共卫生政策制定者和实践者对于描述公共卫生研究结果的信息来源、内容和形式的观点，以告知他们的决策。我们还试图研究公共卫生政策制定者和实践者之间偏好的差异。
对政策制定者和实践者进行了横断面、价值加权调查。要求参与者在不同的(i)研究证据来源、(ii)信息内容和(iii)证据呈现形式之间分配 100 个点的比例。根据他们在制定卫生政策或实践决策时对影响、有用性和偏好的评分来分配分数。
共收到来自 90 名政策制定者和 96 名从业者的 186 份调查回复。研究人员和政府部门机构是最有影响力的研究证据来源，其平均得分最高，其次是知识经纪人、专业同行和协会。对信息内容的感知有用性的平均得分最高的是关键发现和影响的简单总结，其次是循证建议和数据和统计摘要。最后，根据平均分数，政策制定者和从业者更喜欢以同行评议的出版物、报告、证据摘要和通俗易懂的摘要的形式接收研究证据。在来源、信息内容或形式评估方面，以及在不同行为领域有经验的政策制定者和从业者之间，得分差异很小。
这些发现应为未来向这一重要利益相关者群体制定和优化传播策略提供基础。
