Measuring the outcome and impact of research capacity strengthening initiatives: A review of indicators used or described in the published and grey literature

Pulford, Justin ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4756-8480, Price, Natasha, Amegee, Jessica and Bates, Imelda ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0862-8199 (2020) 'Measuring the outcome and impact of research capacity strengthening initiatives: A review of indicators used or described in the published and grey literature'. F1000Research, Vol 9, Issue 517.

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Abstract

Background: Development partners and research councils are increasingly investing in research capacity strengthening initiatives in low- and middle-income countries to support sustainable research systems. However, there are few reported evaluations of research capacity strengthening initiatives and no agreed evaluation metrics.
Methods: To advance progress towards a standardised set of outcome and impact indicators, this paper presents a structured review of research capacity strengthening indicators described in the published and grey literature.
Results: We identified a total of 668 indicators of which 40% measured output, 59.5% outcome and 0.5% impact. Only 1% of outcome and impact indicators met all four quality criteria applied. A majority (63%) of reported outcome indicators clustered in four focal areas, including: research management and support (97/400), the attainment and application of new research skills and knowledge (62/400), research collaboration (53/400), and knowledge transfer (39/400).
Conclusions: Whilst this review identified few examples of quality research capacity strengthening indicators, it has identified priority focal areas in which outcome and impact indicators could be developed as well as a small set of ‘candidate’ indicators that could form the basis of development efforts.

Item Type:	Article
Subjects:	WA Public Health > WA 20.5 Research (General) WA Public Health > Health Problems of Special Population Groups > WA 395 Health in developing countries WA Public Health > Statistics. Surveys > WA 900 Public health statistics WA Public Health > Statistics. Surveys > WA 950 Theory or methods of medical statistics. Epidemiologic methods
Faculty: Department:	Clinical Sciences & International Health > International Public Health Department
Digital Object Identifer (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.24144.1
Depositing User:	Tina Bowers
Date Deposited:	05 Jun 2020 08:58
Last Modified:	13 Jul 2020 09:07
URI:	https://archive.lstmed.ac.uk/id/eprint/14635

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