Research trials in health and social care must be robust enough to be relevant and accessible by multiple stakeholders, including patients, practitioners, researchers, policy makers and funders. Core outcome sets (COS) allow the development of stakeholder-agreed key outcomes to use in future trials and further build an evidence base through inclusion in future meta-analyses. COS development arises from consideration of a scoping review of trials and a primary qualitative study of stakeholder views by a transdisciplinary COS advisory group. However, the primary qualitative research can be time consuming with unclear impact. This presentation outlined recent innovation in COS methods that explored the potential added value of a qualitative systematic review of stakeholder perspectives alongside a systematic review of trial outcomes to inform COS development in neonatal care using case analysis methods. Using these methods together identified more outcome domains for COS group consideration and greater depth of understanding.
The presenter for this webinar was Dr. Ginny Brunton. Dr. Brunton is an Associate Professor in Nursing at Ontario Tech University in Oshawa, Canada. She has twenty-five years experience as a Research Methodologist, focused on evidence synthesis with colleagues at the EPPI-Centre, London and McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada. These methods have focused on quantitative and qualitative research, particularly research on the public’s views of their health and care, funded by the Department of Health and Social Care, ESRC, NIHR and CIHR. These research synthesis methods include the use of framework synthesis and qualitative comparative analysis (QCA).
Dr. Brunton’s work arises from an interest in communities and their involvement in health intervention development, implementation and evaluation. She has conducted systematic reviews of community engagement in health promotion, most currently to inform NICE guidance updating. She has also studied issues in maternal-infant health, including core outcome set development for neonatal ICU care that used an innovative mixed methods approach.
