New impulses from international development for more comprehensive and balanced public engagement evaluation

Marco J Haenssgen

doi:10.1080/16549716.2019.1680067

Marco J Haenssgen

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1080/16549716.2019.1680067

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Abstract

ABSTRACT Public engagement in health research has gained popularity because of its potential to co-create knowledge, generate dialogue, and ground research in the priorities and realities of the target groups. However, public engagement that achieves these objectives could still entail unforeseen negative consequences or a wasteful use of resources. Although the evaluation of public engagement has evolved in recent years, we lack consistent evaluation criteria for systematic and transparent assessments of success and failure. This article introduces standard evaluation criteria from the field of development aid evaluation (effectiveness, efficiency, impact, relevance, sustainability) to promote more systematic and comprehensive evaluation practice. I apply these criteria to the public engagement component of a recent research project into antimicrobial resistance, antibiotic use, and health behaviour in Thailand and Laos. Considering village-level engagement workshops, international exhibitions of photo narratives of traditional healing in northern Thailand, and social media communication, I demonstrate that activities that seem to achieve their objectives can still have problematic characteristics in other dimensions. I conclude that these five generic evaluation criteria can broaden our understanding of public engagement. Their more widespread use in evaluations can help build a more comprehensive and balanced evidence base, even if only a sample of public engagement projects and programmes can be evaluated systematically.

Highlights

Public engagement remains high on researchers’ and funders’ agendas, and it has particular prominence in health research
I argued that this insight from development aid evaluation can add depth and balance to an assessment of public engagement
The outputs from this research help to contribute to the empirical knowledge, to methodological evolution, and to the transparency of public engagement evaluation

Summary

Introduction

Public engagement remains high on researchers’ and funders’ agendas, and it has particular prominence in health research. Framed as science communication, community engagement, or patient and public involvement in health research, the broad definition of public engagement has evolved from the unidirectional transfer of scientific knowledge from researchers to the lay public, to bidirectional and collaborative ‘engagement’ with the users of research and non-academics more broadly [3,4,5,6,7]. Such engagement aims at broadening the appreciation and impact of research, but collaborative relationships are intended to improve relevance and ethical aspects of health research and policy – for instance by enabling scientists to learn from their target populations and define and guide research and practice in a participatory fashion [8,9,10,11,12]. Public engagement following the collaborative strand involves longer-term interaction and partnerships such as the establishment of community health committees to advise the local health system and researchers [5,22]

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