Current Research Capacity Research Articles

Development of a team-specific research strategy using a modified Delphi method in a regional public hospital dietetics department.

Evaluate research capacity and culture among regional hospital dietitians, develop a team specific research strategy, and build research skills of novice researchers. The Research Capacity in Context Tool was used to assess current research capacity and culture at organisational, team and individual levels. Results were analysed using descriptive statistics and content analysis of free text responses. A modified Delphi method gained consensus regarding research capacity building. Mixed method study. Dietetics department of a regional tertiary hospital (Modified Monash Category 2). All clinical dietitians currently employed within the hospital (n = 20) regardless of employment duration. Self-rated response to research capacity and culture to produce a dietetics-specific research strategy. Fifteen dietitians (75%) completed the Research Capacity in Context Tool. The overall mean score was highest at an organisational level at 7.9 (IQR 2), and lowest at team and individual levels at 4.3 (IQR 2.7) and 4.9 (IQR 3.3) respectively. Common barriers to research included time, lack of skills, knowledge and support. Using the modified Delphi method 39 statements relating to research capacity building met consensus and informed the creation of a research strategy. The results of the Research Capacity in Context Tool from this regional study reflect those reported in the literature at metropolitan sites. A dietetic-specific research strategy was developed to assist with increasing research capacity at a team and individual level in a regional setting. Evaluation of long-term outcomes post implementation will be the subject of further research.

Exploring research capacity and culture of allied health professionals: a mixed methods evaluation

BackgroundDespite the myriad benefits of research to patients, professionals, and organisations, fewer than 0.1% of the Allied Health Professions workforce are employed in clinical academic roles. Identified barriers include a lack of role modelling, management support, funding, and availability of clinical academic roles. Research capacity building is critical to improving Allied Health Professional research capability. The aim of this evaluation was to explore the current research capacity and culture of Allied Health Professionals to inform future tailored research capacity building strategies at a local level.MethodsA mixed methods evaluation of research capacity and culture was conducted within the Allied Health Professions department of a large National Health Service Foundation Trust using an online research capacity and culture questionnaire, followed by focus groups. Staff were recruited using a purposive method with the questionnaire and subsequent focus groups completed between July and September 2020. Data from the questionnaire was analysed using simple descriptive statistics and after inductive coding, focus group data was analysed thematically.Results93 out of 278 staff completed the questionnaire and 60 staff members attended seven focus groups. The research capacity and culture survey reported the department’s key strength as promoting clinical practice based on evidence (median=8, range=6-9). A key reported weakness of the department was insufficient resources to support staff research training (med=4, 3-6). Respondents considered themselves most skilled in finding relevant literature (med=6, 5-8) and least skilled at securing research funding (med=1, 1-2). Greater than half of the respondents (n=50) reported not currently being involved with research. Five themes were identified from the focus groups: empowerment; building research infrastructure; fostering research skills; access for all; and positive research culture.ConclusionsAllied Health Professionals recognise the benefits of research at teams and departmental level, but marginally at an individual level. Local research capacity building strategies should aim to address the role, responsibilities and barriers to Allied Health Profession research development at an individual level. To ensure all staff can engage, research infrastructure and empowerment are essential.

Research capacity of global health institutions in China: a gap analysis focusing on their collaboration with other low-income and middle-income countries

IntroductionThis paper presented qualitative and quantitative data collected on the research capacity of global health institutions in China and aimed to provide a landscaping review of the development of global...

The Chiropractic Research Priorities in Australia (ChiRPA) project: A study protocol

IntroductionBuilding and implementing a robust evidence-base which is informed by high quality research is the challenge facing contemporary healthcare professions. In doing so, it can be valuable for healthcare professions to establish a strategic research agenda in order to enhance the professions public health priorities within healthcare and assist in the allocation of limited research resources. Whilst formal chiropractic research agendas have been established in North America and Europe, no comprehensive, inter-organisational chiropractic research agenda has been formulated within the Australian context. A critical precursor to inform the development of any such Australian chiropractic research agenda, is the identification of the priorities held by practising chiropractors, chiropractic academics, educators, researchers, and postgraduate HDR students, along with an appraisal of the current research capacity and output of the Australian chiropractic profession. ObjectivesDesign a questionnaire to; a) identify and rank the research priorities of a national sample of practising chiropractors, chiropractic academics, educators, researchers, and postgraduate HDR students, and; b) examine the current research capacity and output of the Australian chiropractic profession. MethodsA survey instrument design was developed via an iterative process that initially built upon an extensive search of the chiropractic research priority literature from which items were aggregated and distilled. Senior and experienced members of the profession were then consulted to identify other items that should be considered for inclusion. ResultsThe finalised cross-sectional questionnaire is a self-administered, multi-dimensional instrument comprising 5 main research categories. In addition, the questionnaire also includes items such as research funding, support for existing research agendas, and suggestions for future research. The questionnaire also explores research output, research barriers, research time allocation, perspectives on engagement, interdisciplinary collaboration and secured research funding. AnalysisQuantitative data will be descriptively analysed whilst qualitative data will be analysed and reported along standard qualitative study protocols. ConclusionThe Australian chiropractic profession needs to maximise ambitious, collaborative, creative research performed at best practice standards and then accelerate the implementation of useful findings that emerge. By ensuring the voices of all sectors of the profession are heard in the formulation of an Australian Chiropractic Research Agenda, the findings from our study will provide important insights into future research directions for the Australian chiropractic profession.

Evaluation of the research capacity and culture of allied health professionals in a large regional public health service.

PurposeThe first aim of this study was to evaluate the current research capacity and culture among allied health professionals (AHPs) working in a large regional health service. The second aim of this study was to undertake principal component analyses (PCAs) to determine key components influencing our research capacity and culture.Patients and methodsAs part of a cross-sectional observational study, the Research Capacity and Culture (RCC) tool was administered to AHPs working in Gold Coast Health to measure self-reported research capacity and culture across Organization, Team, and Individual domains, including barriers to and motivators for performing research. An exploratory PCA was performed to identify key components influencing research capacity and culture in each of the three domains, and the results were compared with the findings of a previous study performed in a large metropolitan health district.ResultsThis study found moderate levels of research capacity and culture across all domains, with higher scores (median, IQR) reported for the Organization domain (7,5–8) compared to the Team (6,3–8) and Individual domains (5,2–7). Two components were identified in each domain. Components in the Organization domain included “research culture” and “research infrastructure”; components in the Team domain included “valuing and sharing research” and “supporting research”; and components in the Individual domain included “skills for conducting research” and “skills for searching and critiquing the literature”. These components were found to be highly correlated with each other, with correlations between components within each domain ranging from 0.459 to 0.702.ConclusionThe results of this study reinforce the need for an integrated “whole of system” approach to research capacity building. Ongoing investment in tailored support and infrastructure is required to maintain current areas of strengths and build on identified areas of weakness at the level of organizations, teams, and individual AHPs, and consideration should also be given as to how support across these three levels is integrated.

Technology Management and Challenges of Vietnamese Enterprises in the International Market

This research aims to evaluate the current state of technology of enterprises in Vietnam in comparison with several countries in the AEC economic community, thereby to propose several recommendations to Vietnamese enterprises in order able to promote technology innovation activities, create competitiveness with enterprises in the region. Qualitative research methods are used through statistics and comparative descriptions from data collected from various sources: WEF, World Bank, CIEM, General Statistic Office. The study results show that Vietnamese enterprises still have many limitations in technology, originated from their small business scale (capital and labor), the current research capacity is still low, the funding for this activity is not high and the accessibility of the capital is still difficult. According to the Global Competitiveness Index, Vietnam's science and technology indexes are low compared to other AEC-developed countries including the availability of the latest technology; the acquisition of technology at the enterprise level; the capacity of improvement; quality of scientific research organizations..., which shall be a major barrier for Vietnamese enterprises to have to overcome to be able to create the competitiveness when entering the global market. From then on, the authors proposed solutions for two subjects, enterprises and government, to help Vietnamese enterprises to overcome this barrier.

Research capacity for childhood obesity prevention in Latin America: an area for growth.

The rise of childhood obesity in Latin America calls for research capacity to understand, monitor and implement strategies, policies and programmes to address it. The objective of the study was to assess current research capacity in Latin America related to childhood obesity, nutrition and physical activity. We conducted a search of peer-reviewed articles on childhood obesity in Latin America with at least one Latin American author from 2010 to May 2015. We coded 484 published articles for author affiliation, study subjects' nationality, research topic and study design and extracted a series of networks per research topic, study design and collaborating country for each of the countries. Obesity is the most frequently explored topic. Nutrition and obesity are somewhat better developed compared with physical activity and sedentary behaviour. There are numerous observational and cross-sectional studies, indicating either a lack of capacity required for more complex research or the extent of the problem and associated factors is still unknown. The low number of intervention studies and the near absence of policy articles suggest a void in research capacity. For childhood obesity, there is a clear need to build research capacity that documents the current state of the problem and design evidence-based prevention and intervention efforts.

Evaluating Integrative Cancer Clinics With the Claim Assessment Profile: An Example With the InspireHealth Clinic.

Background: The evaluation of freestanding integrative cancer clinical programs is challenging and is rarely done. We have developed an approach called the Claim Assessment Profile (CAP) to identify whether evaluation of a practice is justified, feasible, and likely to provide useful information. Objectives: A CAP was performed in order to (1) clarify the healing claims at InspireHealth, an integrative oncology treatment program, by defining the most important impacts on its clients; (2) gather information about current research capacity at the clinic; and (3) create a program theory and path model for use in prospective research. Study Design/Methods: This case study design incorporates methods from a variety of rapid assessment approaches. Procedures included site visits to observe the program, structured qualitative interviews with 26 providers and staff, surveys to capture descriptive data about the program, and observational data on program implementation. Results: The InspireHealth program is a well-established, multi-site, thriving integrative oncology clinical practice that focuses on patient support, motivation, and health behavior engagement. It delivers patient-centered care via a standardized treatment protocol. There arehigh levels of research interest from staff and resources by which to conduct research. Conclusions: This analysis provides the primary descriptive and claims clarification of an integrative oncology treatment program, an evaluation readiness report, a detailed logic model explicating program theory, and a clinical outcomes path model for conducting prospective research. Prospective evaluation of this program would be feasible and valuable, adding to our knowledge base of integrative cancer therapies.

A REVIEW OF RECENT METHODOLOGIES, TECHNOLOGIES AND USABILITY IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE CONTENT DELIVERY

English Language Teaching (ELT) and content delivery have undergone vast shift in this era of modernization. With analogue content digitized as a common form of knowledge delivery, methodologies equipped with current technologies have produced new perspectives on English Language Learning. This paper reviews the status, context, teaching parameters, assessment parameters, teaching strategies and usability in the current research capacity of ELT, highlighting the current works with technologies in their content delivery methods. Emerging technologies in ELT has also inspires the other spectrum of study involving the usability of technological interfaces, which has evolved constantly with the progression of human and computer interactivity. The aim of this research is to rediscover usability evolution surrounding the technologies in ELT and to redefine the gap existed in between English learning and tools interactivity. Current technologies and usability measures used in ELT will be discussed, highlighting the current trends in gauging interface interaction. A summary of comparative results in the aforementioned works will also be highlighted in this review paper, together with the categorization of reviewed parameters, variables and metrics in ELT. The reviews conducted have shown that there are still many unexplored areas in ELT, ELT technologies and usability in ELT.

ADDRESSING THE CHALLENGE OF WORKFORCE CAPACITY IN DEMENTIA RESEARCH

Dementia currently affects 850,000 people in the UK, devastates families and costs the UK economy an estimated £26 billion a year. After decades of underfunding, investment in dementia research in increasing, but there are still too few researchers working on the condition. A small research workforce may limit the progress that can be made in all fields of investigation, including aetiology, treatment development, care and public health. Alzheimer’s Society commissioned RAND Europe to conduct an independent review of the UK dementia research landscape with a particular emphasis on the current research capacity challenges and policy strategies to address them. RAND Europe’s review used three methods: (i) a bibliometric analysis of UK dementia research; (ii) a tracing exercise of dementia PhDs from the British Library to estimate retention of researchers in the field; (iii) in-depth interviews to investigate workforce strengths and gaps in more depth. These three streams of work were combined to develop a set of ten policy recommendations for building capacity within the UK dementia research workforce. Bibliometric analysis identified the UK as second in the world in terms of the number of dementia research publications produced. There is a shortage of people completing PhDs in dementia, with five times fewer theses completed compared to those in cancer fields. There is also a lack of security and career progression for early career researchers, with at least 70% of recent PhDs leaving the field within 4 years. In biomedical dementia research, there is a particular lack of opportunities for those at the mid-career stage, whereas in clinical and care professions, the opportunity gap is mostly at the early career stage where people will enter into research for the first time. Significantly more academic, clinical and care researchers must be brought into the dementia to find new, innovative ways for our health and social care systems to support the increasing number of people living with dementia. This work has developed ten policy recommendations to inform future strategies aimed at building a large and diverse dementia research community in the UK. Reference: Marjanovic et al. (2015) RAND Europe report

Factors influencing research engagement: research interest, confidence and experience in an Australian speech-language pathology workforce

BackgroundRecent initiatives within an Australia public healthcare service have seen a focus on increasing the research capacity of their workforce. One of the key initiatives involves encouraging clinicians to be research generators rather than solely research consumers. As a result, baseline data of current research capacity are essential to determine whether initiatives encouraging clinicians to undertake research have been effective. Speech pathologists have previously been shown to be interested in conducting research within their clinical role; therefore they are well positioned to benefit from such initiatives. The present study examined the current research interest, confidence and experience of speech language pathologists (SLPs) in a public healthcare workforce, as well as factors that predicted clinician research engagement.MethodsData were collected via an online survey emailed to an estimated 330 SLPs working within Queensland, Australia. The survey consisted of 30 questions relating to current levels of interest, confidence and experience performing specific research tasks, as well as how frequently SLPs had performed these tasks in the last 5 years.ResultsAlthough 158 SLPs responded to the survey, complete data were available for only 137. Respondents were more confident and experienced with basic research tasks (e.g., finding literature) and less confident and experienced with complex research tasks (e.g., analysing and interpreting results, publishing results). For most tasks, SLPs displayed higher levels of interest in the task than confidence and experience. Research engagement was predicted by highest qualification obtained, current job classification level and overall interest in research.ConclusionsRespondents generally reported levels of interest in research higher than their confidence and experience, with many respondents reporting limited experience in most research tasks. Therefore SLPs have potential to benefit from research capacity building activities to increase their research skills in order to meet organisational research engagement objectives. However, these findings must be interpreted with the caveats that a relatively low response rate occurred and participants were recruited from a single state-wide health service, and therefore may not be representative of the wider SLP workforce.

Introduction and Commentary for Special Issue Simulation Techniques in Health Services Research

Introduction and Commentary for Special Issue Simulation Techniques in Health Services Research

Enhancing research interest and collaboration in the interdisciplinary context of emergency care

The interdisciplinary context of the emergency department encompasses diverse clinical presentations requiring teamwork by doctors, nurses and allied health workers to achieve optimal patient care. This interdisciplinary focus is extended by adding a research perspective. This project sought to systematically examine the current research capacity of emergency department staff at a major Australian tertiary urban hospital and to derive information about further research-related needs with a view to enhancing research capacity. The mixed method project utilized a department-wide staff survey followed by focus groups and individual interviews. Adequate response rates to the two phases were achieved (n = 67, n = 17 respectively). Not surprisingly, 89% of participants reported that they needed help with developing their research skills. Clinicians reported little or no experience with (i) finding literature (35%) and critical review (50%), (ii) research skills and techniques, both qualitative (72%) and quantitative (63%), and (iii) research output: publishing (68%), writing & presenting (34%). Data from focus groups and individual interviews yielded themes around developing research skills, communication, meaningfulness, team work and interdisciplinary strategies, forming part of the Dimensional Enhancing Research Capacity (DERC) model. This project highlighted not only interdisciplinary needs for research but also the way that research may additionally assist with building interprofessional linkage.

Freshwater fishes of Patagonia in the 21st Century after a hundred years of human settlement, species introductions, and environmental change

We review the status of the freshwater fish fauna of Patagonia, an assemblage with 26 native species, comprising fishes of Gondwanan origin, marine dispersants, and oceanic elements of local origin. Several processes, old and new, have shaped the landscape of Patagonia and its fauna: a Gondwanan heritage, the Andes uplifting, Pleistocene ice, volcanic activity, introduction of exotic fishes, mostly Salmonids, and climate change. While there is a significant tradition of taxonomic work on native fish species, research on life history, trophic relationships, and community structure has started to emerge only in the last 15 years. Most studies were conducted in oligotrophic lakes of the Andes; while fauna of streams remains poorly observed. While documentation of impacts by salmonids is scarce, there is some compelling evidence indicating that freshwater communities have been significantly shaped by exotic fish. Impacts by exotic species appear to be dependent on temperature on the east side of the Andes, and land use and watershed perturbation on the west side.In general, freshwater habitat conditions and how they affect fishes are poorly studied. In lakes, habitat complexity and its specialized use by native fishes may have ameliorated the impact by introduced salmonids. Although impacts on rivers abound, led by dam construction, the relationship between stream habitat integrity and native species health is still poorly understood. The future of freshwater resources will largely depend on how able we are to inform managers, the general public and colleagues about their value and the costs of not taking action. But current research capacity is insufficient to deal with most demands because of limitations in people, resources and baseline information. To support our claims, we need to promote regional assessments of freshwater resources and of major threats to their integrity, the building blocks of a regional agenda for their sustainable use.

Ramping Up Rehabilitation Research Urged as a “Public Health Imperative”

CHICAGO—Three years ago, the journal Science featured a series of articles describing the wonders of bioengineering and bionics and the promise they hold for mending bodies broken by spinal cord injuries, stroke, and diseased joints and organs. But even as many of these wonders are being put to the test in clinical trials, clinicians and basic scientists in the field of disability rehabilitation are facing challenges that even the Six Million Dollar Man might find difficult to overcome. During the joint conference of the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine and the American Society of Neurorehabilitation here in late September, experts debated not only sophisticated techniques such as the use of cortical stimulation to aid stroke recovery but also some fundamental issues concerning current research capacity in rehabilitation medicine. Rory Cooper, PhD, professor and chair of rehabilitation science and technology in the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh, in Pennsylvania, told his colleagues that the field currently lacks many of the resources needed to achieve the objectives described in Science’s February 8, 2002, issue on “The Bionic Human.” He said resources that are in short supply include federal funding, an ample pool of well-trained investigators, mentors for young investigators entering the field, and new tools to measure rehabilitation outcomes. “This is a public health imperative,” Cooper said, noting that in the next 25 years an estimated 20% of the US population will be aged 65 years or older. “Disability rehabilitation research is a quality of life issue, as well as a technology issue and a medical care issue.”