Ding Yan, Hooper Jessica, Bates Imelda
Department of Health Sciences, University of York, York, YO10 5DD, UK.
Centre for Capacity Research, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Liverpool, L3 5QA, UK.
BMC Glob Public Health. 2024 Dec 6;2(1):82. doi: 10.1186/s44263-024-00113-x.
Solutions to global health challenges depend on nations' capacity for cross-disciplinary research in global health. Despite longstanding demands for practical guidelines, published guidance and frameworks for evaluating cross-disciplinary research are scarce and scattered among disciplines. We aimed to bring together information on how cross-disciplinary research has been evaluated and collate the frameworks and tools that have been used to advance knowledge and practice about the design and evaluation of cross-disciplinary research in global health.
We conducted a systematic scoping review by searching five databases (MEDLINE, CINAHL COMPLETE, Global Health, PubMed, Web of Science) for publications relevant for our objectives. These were to understand the characteristics of frameworks used to evaluate cross-disciplinary research, to describe how they had been used in practice, and to identify underlying common underpinning criteria. Our inclusion criteria were that the publications (a) focus on frameworks for cross-disciplinary research and (b) include aspects of evaluation or monitoring. The last search was conducted in July 2023.
Thirty-one of 2718 screened publications met our inclusion criteria. The intended users of the frameworks were cross-disciplinary researchers (31; 97%), funders (15; 48%), evaluators/reviewers (15; 48%) and practitioners/stakeholders (10; 32%). Eight frameworks (26%) were bespoke for a particular project and used a 'context-process-outcome' approach to incorporate the whole research pathway. Four frameworks (13%) focused on evaluating outcome/impact. Nineteen (61%) focused on other specific aspects of cross-disciplinary research. Seventeen frameworks (55%) provided evaluation tools and 14 (45%) included guidance about their use in practice. Twenty-four (77%) provided examples of how their frameworks were used in practice, and 21 (68%) stated that their frameworks were generalizable in different contexts. The criteria used for the evaluations across the publications fell into four categories: appropriate cross-disciplinary research approaches for the project goal; shared learning and integration; meeting disciplinary standards; and effective synthesis.
Our collation and description of the heterogenous published guidance and frameworks for evaluating cross-disciplinary research, and our practical lessons for how to improve the robustness of such evaluations, will help funders, researchers and evaluators to make evidence-informed choices when they commission, design and evaluate cross-disciplinary research programmes in global health.
应对全球卫生挑战的解决方案取决于各国开展全球卫生跨学科研究的能力。尽管长期以来一直需要实用指南，但已发表的评估跨学科研究的指南和框架却很稀少，且分散在各个学科中。我们旨在汇总关于跨学科研究如何进行评估的信息，并整理用于推进全球卫生跨学科研究设计与评估的知识及实践的框架和工具。
我们通过检索五个数据库（MEDLINE、CINAHL COMPLETE、Global Health、PubMed、Web of Science）对与我们目标相关的出版物进行了系统的范围综述。这些目标包括了解用于评估跨学科研究的框架的特征，描述它们在实践中的使用方式，并确定潜在的共同支撑标准。我们的纳入标准是出版物（a）关注跨学科研究框架，且（b）包括评估或监测方面。最后一次检索于2023年7月进行。
在筛选的2718篇出版物中，有31篇符合我们的纳入标准。这些框架的目标用户包括跨学科研究人员（31名；97%）、资助者（15名；48%）、评估者/评审者（15名；48%）以及从业者/利益相关者（10名；32%）。八个框架（26%）是为特定项目定制的，采用“背景 - 过程 - 结果”方法纳入整个研究路径。四个框架（13%）侧重于评估结果/影响。十九个框架（61%）关注跨学科研究的其他特定方面。十七个框架（55%）提供了评估工具，14个框架（45%）包括关于其在实践中使用的指导。二十四个框架（77%）提供了其框架在实践中使用的示例，21个框架（68%）表示其框架可在不同背景下推广。各出版物用于评估的标准分为四类：针对项目目标的适当跨学科研究方法；共享学习与整合；符合学科标准；以及有效综合。
我们对已发表的用于评估跨学科研究的异质指南和框架的整理与描述，以及关于如何提高此类评估稳健性的实践经验，将有助于资助者、研究人员和评估者在委托、设计和评估全球卫生跨学科研究项目时做出基于证据的选择。
