Abstract
Large groups of researchers who agree to offer their research ideas and then score them against pre–defined criteria are at the heart of each CHNRI priority–setting exercise. Although the roles of funders and other stakeholders are also very important, much of the exercise is focused on selecting and engaging a large group of researchers, obtaining their input and analysing it to derive the initial results of the process. In a sense, a CHNRI exercise serves to “visualise” the collective knowledge and opinions of many leading researchers on the status of their own research field. Through a simple “crowdsourcing” process conducted within the relevant research community, the CHNRI approach is able to collate a wide spectrum of research ideas and options, and come to a judgement on their strengths and weaknesses, based on the collective knowledge and opinions of many members of the research community. In doing so, it provides valuable information to funders, stakeholders and researchers themselves, which is obtained at low cost and with little time necessary to conduct the exercise.
Highlights
Large groups of researchers who agree to offer their research ideas and score them against pre–defined criteria are at the heart of each CHNRI priority–setting exercise
It was agreed that an official approach through the World Health Organization (WHO), that agreed to serve as the hosting hub for the management group, would be most likely to persuade invited researchers to participate in the exercise
A high participation rate should limit the scope for response bias, which is a major concern with CHNRI exercises
Summary
Following input from funders, as described in a previous paper of this series [1], the managers of the CHNRI process need to involve a sufficiently large sample of researchers. We should explain why CHNRI uses only researchers to provide research ideas, and not other groups of people–eg, funders, programme leaders and managers, other stakeholders, or members of the public This is typically justified on the grounds that researchers are expected to possess far more knowledge and understanding of the state of their research field and the questions that have real potential to generate new knowledge. There have been several examples of such exercises, eg, the implementation of zinc interventions [3], implementation research for maternal and newborn health [4], emerging (discovery–based) interventions for childhood pneumonia and diarrhoea [5,6] and others In such cases, there is scope for involving further groups of people whose knowledge and experience can provide informative input, if this input is limited to the priority–setting criteria where the researchers would be unlikely to possess any first–hand knowledge. A good understanding of the complexities and challenges involved tends to make the experts–whoever they are–more cautious about the prospects of the suggested research ideas
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