Research proposal checklist
The inclusion of this general construct appeared helpful in prompting researchers to consider issues such as sampling strategy (“how ‘typical’ is my organisation? Foundation trust status, teaching/research beacon site, cqc or other ratings if it clear where the organisation is located? The checklist was helpful, particularly in thinking through the many and varied aspects of context”“depending on the proposal content, for instance if it was an intervention study, i would access and use it”“the most useful box was the contextual information, not many of those details would have been added if the box was not there”.
Peer review of the most common reasons for rejecting research proposals in the national institute for health research (nihr) health services and delivery research (hs&dr) programme is the failure to adequately specify the intervention or context in research proposals. Examples include any policy initiatives related to the intervention; issues at the study sites around exceptional leadership, for instance championing by nurse director or clinical team and local features such as unusual geographical or service configurations; whether there is participation in an improvement collaborative or commissioning for quality and innovation initiative on particular clinical area; or a relevant pay-for-performance initiative for a clinical sionthis paper reports on a small action-orientated mixed methods study which aimed to develop a checklist to be used to aid researchers when writing research proposals to submit to the nihr hs&dr programme. One of the main difficulties in health service research is generalising findings from one service to another, given the importance of context and local determinants of practice.
Future work could include more rigorous validation of the l positive feedback from researchers indicated that this checklist may be a useful tool to help address the problem of not being able to fund important research proposals. Tentative findings suggest usefulness and acceptability of such a tool but further work is needed for full sa mixed methods approach was used in four stages to meet the aims of the y, an initial checklist was designed by hd and tl, based on a review of existing checklists, reporting standards, and relevant literature. The next two stages externally validated the revised checklist by collecting qualitative feedback from researchers and experts in the initial checklist was developed from existing checklists which included domains of intervention and context.
Once this had been completed a number of changes were made, which are discussed further three and the whole, the researchers responded positively to the checklist; a sample of the feedback from researchers is presented in table 1. There are many constructs which would be useful to a researcher; however, some have changed shape or have been removed at various stages during the development of the checklist. To improve the checklist need to include points on which other groups are likely to be affected by the change in service delivery”“if the language used was more generic i.
These are all important service developments which need evaluation, but the lack of clarity about the intervention and context prevented these research proposals from obtaining funding. Original file for figure ing intereststhe authors are employed at the national evaluation, trials and studies coordinating centre, which manages the hs&dr programme on behalf of the s’ contributionshd led the research and the writing of the paper. Elements of this construct have been seen in other checklists such as those used for patient safety [6]; however, the wording has been adapted to suit the needs of this checklist.
Make sure:The purpose is expressed in terms of the broader context of the are not too many research questions, so the focus is aims are related to the stated literature review demonstrates that you are aware of the diversity of material that is related to your research proposal. Thus, the ‘other important contextual information’ construct was developed to ensure the researchers have considered all characteristics of contextual information in their research proposal, particularly those that affect the generalizability to other sites. High-quality proposal not just promises success to your project, but also impresses your committee about your potential as a researcher.
Further validation is needed to demonstrate relevance to a wider range of researchers and funding services and delivery al health al institute for health ledgementsthe authors would like to acknowledge staff at netscc, particularly ruairidh milne and david wright, for their help and advice. Development of the checklist checklist constructs were adapted for use by researchers by giving further explanation to clarify the background to each one by considering their relevance to nihr hs&dr research proposals. Not focussed towards intervention studies it could be more widely employed”“the checklist should fit on one page, anything bigger than that would probably put people off from reading it”“it would take too long to fill out”.
The blurring was recognised as a difficulty for researchers, but it has not been possible to keep the two separate. Important contextual there any other contextual aspects which may affect the outcomes of this research and generalizability to other sites? To provide focus, this sample was kept to research proposals received in response to two nihr hs&dr invitations to apply for research funding.
However, as the feedback confirms, having six clear constructs may make applying for research funding more straightforward for less experienced applicants, so the blurring should be less of a study’s main strength is that, to our knowledge, this is the first time someone has developed a checklist to aid the development of research proposals in health services and delivery research. Researchers from each project were asked to complete the checklist for their study (unless they felt their study did not have an ‘intervention’, as the checklist would not be applicable to them). Most checklists which are used to report research emphasise the importance of having a good description of the participants.
The first step was to gain feedback from researchers who were preparing to submit detailed full proposals to the nihr hs&dr programme in response to the invitation to apply for funding for studies on ‘the organisation and delivery of 24/7 healthcare’. In the research researchers also had concerns about the checklist and recommendations for improvements were given. The checklist was developed essentially as an in-house, pragmatic tool for the nihr hs&dr programme and further research is needed to strengthen the checklist.
