https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3281-1110
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Abstract
Purpose
To establish consensus regarding principles that should be used to guide spinal cord injury (SCI) research partnerships between researchers and research users.
Materials and methods
A three-round Delphi consensus exercise was carried out with researchers and/or research users involved in one or more SCI research partnerships. Participants considered a list of 125 partnership principles. In rounds 1 and 2, participants rated their agreement that a principle should guide SCI research partnerships on an 11-point Likert scale. After each round, principles that received a mean score of ≥8.0 or 70% of participants rated the principle ≥8.0 were retained. In round 3, participants categorized principles as essential, desirable, irrelevant, or unsure.
Results
At least 20 individuals participated in each round. In round 1, 103 principles met consensus criteria and eight principles were added. In round 2, 93 principles met the criteria. In round 3, 29 principles were categorized as essential and eight as desirable. Recommended principles focused on the interpersonal, relational, and logistical aspects of partnerships. Principles that did not reach consensus related to social justice and actionable impact.
Conclusions
Findings provide insight into 37 principles that could be used to combat tokenism and inform future guidance to meaningfully engage partners in SCI research.
Consensus-based research partnership principles (i.e., norms or beliefs) were identified and could be prioritized to help support spinal cord injury (SCI) researchers and research users combat tokenism and meaningfully engage research users as partners in the co-creation of knowledge.
The resulting list of recommended research partnership principles was used to inform the development of guidance to support quality partnerships between SCI researchers and research users within and outside the rehabilitation context (www.IKTprinciples.com).
Guidance supporting meaningful research partnerships may accelerate the time between discovery and use of research in practice.
Implications for Rehabilitation
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank all members of the SCI Guiding Principles Consensus Panel: Heather L. Gainforth, Chris McBride, Kim Anderson, Hugh Anton, John Chernesky, Susan Forwell, Jocelyn Maffin, Kathleen Martin Ginis, W. Ben Mortenson, Peter Athanasopoulos, and Rhonda Willms.
Statement of ethics: We certify that all applicable institutional and governmental regulations concerning the ethical participation of human volunteers were followed during the course of this research. All methods were approved by Research Services Behavioural Research Ethics Board of The University of British Columbia Okanagan (H19-00606).
Author contributons
HG and JM led the research project. HG, RM and FH developed the methods, conducted the analyses, and drafted the initial manuscript. JM, KS, MJ provided feedback on the methods and analyses. All authors provided feedback and approved the manuscript.
Disclosure statement
The authors do not have competing financial interests in relation to the work. Of note, authors (HG, JM) and the SCI Guiding Principles Consensus Panel play a leadership role within the SCI Research System. Additionally, the panel and all authors are funded to conduct research using and/or investigating an integrated knowledge translation (IKT) approach.
Data availability statement
The dataset generated and analyzed during the current study are available on Open Science Framework (doi:10.17605/OSF.IO/A2RF6), data and additional supplementary files are available via the temporary link: https://osf.io/a2rf6/?view_only=77d2819f5b1349328f701ea142d89fec.
Notes
1 Note. Participants could represent multiple roles.