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Service user reflections on the impact of involvement in research

Overview of attention for article published in Research Involvement and Engagement, March 2018
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  • In the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (94th percentile)
  • Good Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (66th percentile)

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Title
Service user reflections on the impact of involvement in research
Published in
Research Involvement and Engagement, March 2018
DOI 10.1186/s40900-018-0095-1
Pubmed ID
Authors

Jim Gordon, Sue Franklin, Sabrina A. Eltringham

Abstract

Public involvement can impact on research, on the public who give advice, on the researchers and the research participants. Evaluating impact is an important part of the research process. Two members of a hospital-based patient research panel and our coordinator have written this paper. Our panel covers a range of rehabilitation and palliative services. These services form the "Therapeutics and Palliative Care Directorate". We describe how we worked collaboratively with hospital staff and co-produced questionnaires to evaluate the impact of our involvement. We compared the different perspectives of the researchers and panel members on our contribution to the research. We present evidence from these different standpoints, including how our panel made a difference. We found we needed to adapt how we collected the views of the researchers and our members to ensure it was meaningful to our group whilst delivering the wider objective of the hospital. A key finding has been how our involvement has extended into other groups, which has identified opportunities for sharing resources and experience, including areas such as cost effectiveness. Our two-person membership of a high level Board of Academics and Senior Clinicians, which oversees the research we contribute to, has resulted in our opinions influencing the heart of the Directorate's research strategy. We have learned the importance of a flexible approach as the Directorate changes, and the demands on us grow. This will continue to help us share our own development, successes and experience and extend the benefits from working this way. Background Reports about the impact of patient and public involvement in research can be improved by involving patients and research staff more collaboratively to co-produce instruments to measure their involvement. This commentary, written by two members of a hospital-based patient panel and their coordinator for its work, describes how we co-produced instruments to evaluate the impact and effectiveness of our involvement. We present here the results, including our quantitative and qualitative findings, of this patient led evaluation and reflect on how our involvement has made a difference to the research projects and research infrastructure within the hospital in which we operate and on us as a panel.MethodsExisting impact frameworks and guidelines were reviewed. Members co-produced and piloted qualitative questionnaires to identify values associated with patient and public involvement (PPI) from both a researcher and panel member perspective, and collected quantitative metrics to provide descriptive statistics on the type of involvement and activities. Members also produced a comments slip to provide contemporaneous feedback after each meeting.ResultsThe panel has reviewed 36 research projects for the Therapeutics and Palliative Care Directorate drawn from speech and language therapy, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, dietetics, podiatry, palliative care services and chaplaincy. Some of the main results of our involvement have been the development of grant applications and making written information more understandable for research participants. Examples of how the Panel made a difference included providing an effective forum for debate by providing practical suggestions to improve research design and identifying potential issues that may not have occurred to the researcher. The panel has had an impact outside of meetings both within the context in which it operates and on the individuals involved. Examples included: influencing the Directorate research agenda, sharing resources with other groups, developing research relationships, and enabling member participation in different roles and settings.DiscussionEmbedding ourselves within the Directorate research infrastructure has enabled us to adapt to organisational change and actively contribute to the research strategy. There is greater scope for involvement in areas of cost effectiveness and economic evaluation. Increasing member contributions and networking with other groups provides added value as well as cross fertilisation of ideas as part of our widening impact.ConclusionEvaluating the impact of our involvement has improved our understanding of what aspects of involvement work best for the panel and the researchers who attend our meetings, and in the different settings that we work in. It has helped us to focus on how we need to develop to maximise our resources going forward.

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The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 73 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 72 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Unknown 72 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Master 13 18%
Researcher 10 14%
Student > Ph. D. Student 7 10%
Student > Bachelor 5 7%
Student > Doctoral Student 4 6%
Other 9 13%
Unknown 24 33%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Medicine and Dentistry 14 19%
Nursing and Health Professions 10 14%
Social Sciences 7 10%
Psychology 6 8%
Economics, Econometrics and Finance 2 3%
Other 6 8%
Unknown 27 38%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 47. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 13 December 2018.
All research outputs
#873,076
of 25,193,883 outputs
Outputs from Research Involvement and Engagement
#52
of 496 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#19,604
of 336,156 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Research Involvement and Engagement
#4
of 9 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,193,883 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 96th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 496 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 20.5. This one has done well, scoring higher than 89% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 336,156 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 94% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 9 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has scored higher than 5 of them.