Background

Increasingly, researchers need to demonstrate the impact of their research to their sponsors, funders, and fellow academics. However, the most appropriate way of measuring the impact of healthcare research is subject to debate. We aimed to identify the existing methodological frameworks used to measure healthcare research impact and to summarise the common themes and metrics in an impact matrix.

Methods and findings

Two independent investigators systematically searched the Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online (MEDLINE), the Excerpta Medica Database (EMBASE), the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL+), the Health Management Information Consortium, and the Journal of Research Evaluation from inception until May 2017 for publications that presented a methodological framework for research impact. We then summarised the common concepts and themes across methodological frameworks and identified the metrics used to evaluate differing forms of impact. Twenty-four unique methodological frameworks were identified, addressing 5 broad categories of impact: (1) ‘primary research-related impact’, (2) ‘influence on policy making’, (3) ‘health and health systems impact’, (4) ‘health-related and societal impact’, and (5) ‘broader economic impact’. These categories were subdivided into 16 common impact subgroups. Authors of the included publications proposed 80 different metrics aimed at measuring impact in these areas. The main limitation of the study was the potential exclusion of relevant articles, as a consequence of the poor indexing of the databases searched.

Conclusions

The measurement of research impact is an essential exercise to help direct the allocation of limited research resources, to maximise research benefit, and to help minimise research waste. This review provides a collective summary of existing methodological frameworks for research impact, which funders may use to inform the measurement of research impact and researchers may use to inform study design decisions aimed at maximising the short-, medium-, and long-term impact of their research.

中文翻译：

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评估医疗保健研究的影响：方法框架的系统回顾

背景

研究人员越来越需要证明其研究对赞助者，资助者和其他学者的影响。但是，衡量医疗保健研究影响的最合适方法尚有争议。我们旨在确定用于衡量医疗保健研究影响的现有方法论框架，并总结影响矩阵中的共同主题和指标。

方法和发现

两名独立研究者系统地搜索了在线医学文献分析和检索系统（MEDLINE），医学摘录数据库（EMBASE），护理和专职健康文献的累积索引（CINAHL +），健康管理信息联盟以及研究评估杂志从成立到2017年5月，为那些提出研究影响的方法框架的出版物提供服务。然后，我们总结了方法论框架中的共同概念和主题，并确定了用于评估不同影响形式的指标。确定了二十四个独特的方法论框架，涉及五类主要影响：（1）“与研究相关的主要影响”，（2）“对政策制定的影响”，（3）“卫生和卫生系统影响”，（4 ）“与健康相关的社会影响”，（5）“更广泛的经济影响”。这些类别被细分为16个共同影响子组。纳入出版物的作者提出了80种不同的指标，旨在衡量这些领域的影响。这项研究的主要局限性是相关文章可能被排除在外，这是由于搜索数据库的索引编制不佳所致。

结论

衡量研究影响是一项重要工作，有助于指导有限的研究资源的分配，最大程度地提高研究收益并最大程度地减少研究浪费。这篇综述提供了现有的研究影响力方法框架的汇总，资助者可以使用这些框架来衡量研究的影响，研究人员可以用来提供研究设计的决策，以最大程度地提高研究的短期，中期和长期影响。他们的研究。