Consumer‐Led Codesign of an Effective Online Consumer and Community Involvement Audit Tool

TL;DR

This paper describes the development of an online audit tool to measure consumer and community involvement in health research, designed with input from stakeholders.

Contribution

The novel contribution is a consumer-led audit tool to evaluate and improve community involvement in health research.

Findings

Participants positively responded to the audit tool's ability to quantify CCI implementation.

Gaps identified include health literacy and cultural responsiveness for migrant communities.

The tool helped stakeholders identify strengths and opportunities for improving community involvement.

Abstract

There is evidence that consumer and community involvement (CCI) improves the quality and outcomes of health research. However, there is currently limited support for organisations to plan, implement and evaluate CCI activity. We aimed to codesign an audit tool that will enable organisations, researchers, community members and funders to measure the extent and nature of CCI in their respective settings. The tool was based on the Western Australian Health Translation Network's CCI Handbook.

We offered optional online workshops to inform participants about the study (total n = 9). Following this, we obtained feedback on the appropriateness of the Handbook and audit tool (n = 11). Finally, using Qualtrics surveys, we assessed the quality and effectiveness of the tool in evaluating CCI with 10 researchers, 6 funders, and 1 community member (total n = 17) sourced from networks within Monash University and the Perron Institute for Neurological and Translational Science.

Overall participants had a positive response to the audit tool and believed it had value in quantifying direct implementation of CCI in their workplaces. Gaps identified included the need to address health and research literacy of community members, culturally responsive approaches when working with community members from migrant backgrounds and an identified need for visual and digital resources.

Application of the tool enabled participants to identify their respective CCI strengths, weakness and opportunities for improving the meaningful involvement of community members and community in their research activities and to support equity in these processes.

The public participated in workshops providing feedback on the general structure of the audit tool as well as testing it within their research projects.