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Category: Methods and Measures

Description: Abstract Introduction: Evidence syntheses, often in the form of systematic reviews, are essential for the development of clinical guidelines which inform changes to health policies. Clinical guidelines are recommendations on how health care providers and patients make decisions about appropriate healthcare for specific circumstances. Guideline development groups (GDG) are often comprised of a mix of individuals with different levels of expertise and experience, including healthcare professionals, patient representatives, administrators, policymakers, and researchers. GDGs work together to combine or synthesize all of the information on a specific topic through different forms of evidence synthesis. There is currently no standard for how to best present summaries of these evidence syntheses to the different members in a GDG. We recently conducted a mixed methods systematic review (MMSR) to investigate this further and synthesized findings which provided us with a list of recommendations to help produce more effective summary formats for evidence syntheses. However, there were 126 heterogeneous recommendations covering a mix of evidence synthesis types and summary formats. Ninety four recommendations applied broadly to evidence syntheses whereas the other 32 related to specific types (e.g., network meta-analysis). Nine recommendations had mixed-methods support whereas an additional 21 were supported by at least 3 different streams of evidence. The overall aim of this project is to co-develop and test different ways of communicating findings of evidence syntheses (visual, audio, and digital summary formats) which are easy to understand to the different GDG members. Methods: This study will use co-design focus group workshops to develop prototype summary formats to conduct user testing with those who have been involved in GDGs. To create topic guides for the focus groups (Phase 1), we will first conduct a pragmatic prioritisation exercise with the project expert advisory group to narrow down the list of 94 recommendations developed from our MMSR into a shorter priority list. Interactive online focus groups will then be conducted with multidisciplinary groups of key stakeholder including those who have been previously involved in GDGs, methodologists and communications experts. Based on feedback, we will develop prototype summary formats to present to participants in user testing via one-on-one semi-structured interviews in Phase 2. Discussion: Results from workshops and semi-structured interviews will help develop and test evidence syntheses summary formats. These templates can then be further disseminated to help with more effective communication to guideline development groups.