TY - JOUR
T1 - Which clinical research questions are the most important?
T2 - Development and preliminary validation of the Australia & New Zealand Musculoskeletal (ANZMUSC) Clinical Trials Network Research Question Importance Tool (ANZMUSC-RQIT)
AU - Taylor, William J
AU - Willink, Robin
AU - O'Connor, Denise A
AU - Patel, Vinay
AU - Bourne, Allison
AU - Harris, Ian A
AU - Whittle, Samuel L
AU - Richards, Bethan
AU - Clavisi, Ornella
AU - Green, Sally
AU - Hinman, Rana S
AU - Maher, Chris G
AU - Cahill, Ainslie
AU - McPherson, Annie
AU - Hewson, Charlotte
AU - May, Suzie E
AU - Walker, Bruce
AU - Robinson, Philip C
AU - Ghersi, Davina
AU - Fitzpatrick, Jane
AU - Winzenberg, Tania
AU - Fallon, Kieran
AU - Glasziou, Paul
AU - Billot, Laurent
AU - Buchbinder, Rachelle
N1 - Copyright: © 2023 Taylor et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Funding Information:
Funding:ThisstudywasfundedbytheAustralian NationalHealthandMedicalResearchCouncil (NHMRC)Australia&NewZealand Musculoskeletal(ANZMUSC)ClinicalTrials NetworkCentreofResearchExcellence (APP1134856).RBissupportedbyanNHMRC InvestigatorFellowship(APP1194483).RSHis supportedbyanNHMRCSeniorResearch Fellowship(APP1154217).Thefundershadnorole instudydesign,datacollectionandanalysis, decisiontopublish,orpreparationofthe manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 Public Library of Science. All rights reserved.
PY - 2023/3/17
Y1 - 2023/3/17
N2 - BACKGROUND AND AIMS: High quality clinical research that addresses important questions requires significant resources. In resource-constrained environments, projects will therefore need to be prioritized. The Australia and New Zealand Musculoskeletal (ANZMUSC) Clinical Trials Network aimed to develop a stakeholder-based, transparent, easily implementable tool that provides a score for the 'importance' of a research question which could be used to rank research projects in order of importance.METHODS: Using a mixed-methods, multi-stage approach that included a Delphi survey, consensus workshop, inter-rater reliability testing, validity testing and calibration using a discrete-choice methodology, the Research Question Importance Tool (ANZMUSC-RQIT) was developed. The tool incorporated broad stakeholder opinion, including consumers, at each stage and is designed for scoring by committee consensus.RESULTS: The ANZMUSC-RQIT tool consists of 5 dimensions (compared to 6 dimensions for an earlier version of RQIT): (1) extent of stakeholder consensus, (2) social burden of health condition, (3) patient burden of health condition, (4) anticipated effectiveness of proposed intervention, and (5) extent to which health equity is addressed by the research. Each dimension is assessed by defining ordered levels of a relevant attribute and by assigning a score to each level. The scores for the dimensions are then summed to obtain an overall ANZMUSC-RQIT score, which represents the importance of the research question. The result is a score on an interval scale with an arbitrary unit, ranging from 0 (minimal importance) to 1000. The ANZMUSC-RQIT dimensions can be reliably ordered by committee consensus (ICC 0.73-0.93) and the overall score is positively associated with citation count (standardised regression coefficient 0.33, p<0.001) and journal impact factor group (OR 6.78, 95% CI 3.17 to 14.50 for 3rd tertile compared to 1st tertile of ANZMUSC-RQIT scores) for 200 published musculoskeletal clinical trials.CONCLUSION: We propose that the ANZMUSC-RQIT is a useful tool for prioritising the importance of a research question.
AB - BACKGROUND AND AIMS: High quality clinical research that addresses important questions requires significant resources. In resource-constrained environments, projects will therefore need to be prioritized. The Australia and New Zealand Musculoskeletal (ANZMUSC) Clinical Trials Network aimed to develop a stakeholder-based, transparent, easily implementable tool that provides a score for the 'importance' of a research question which could be used to rank research projects in order of importance.METHODS: Using a mixed-methods, multi-stage approach that included a Delphi survey, consensus workshop, inter-rater reliability testing, validity testing and calibration using a discrete-choice methodology, the Research Question Importance Tool (ANZMUSC-RQIT) was developed. The tool incorporated broad stakeholder opinion, including consumers, at each stage and is designed for scoring by committee consensus.RESULTS: The ANZMUSC-RQIT tool consists of 5 dimensions (compared to 6 dimensions for an earlier version of RQIT): (1) extent of stakeholder consensus, (2) social burden of health condition, (3) patient burden of health condition, (4) anticipated effectiveness of proposed intervention, and (5) extent to which health equity is addressed by the research. Each dimension is assessed by defining ordered levels of a relevant attribute and by assigning a score to each level. The scores for the dimensions are then summed to obtain an overall ANZMUSC-RQIT score, which represents the importance of the research question. The result is a score on an interval scale with an arbitrary unit, ranging from 0 (minimal importance) to 1000. The ANZMUSC-RQIT dimensions can be reliably ordered by committee consensus (ICC 0.73-0.93) and the overall score is positively associated with citation count (standardised regression coefficient 0.33, p<0.001) and journal impact factor group (OR 6.78, 95% CI 3.17 to 14.50 for 3rd tertile compared to 1st tertile of ANZMUSC-RQIT scores) for 200 published musculoskeletal clinical trials.CONCLUSION: We propose that the ANZMUSC-RQIT is a useful tool for prioritising the importance of a research question.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85150279781&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0281308
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0281308
M3 - Article
C2 - 36930668
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 18
SP - e0281308
JO - PLoS One
JF - PLoS One
IS - 3
M1 - e0281308
ER -