This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognizing you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
How do we monitor programs that spur engagement in research?
Building a coding database of PCORI’s program portfolio
Challenge
The Eugene Washington Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) Engagement Award program seeks to help patients and other communities become more involved in all aspects of the research process, from topic selection to dissemination of findings. These Engagement Awards enhance PCORI’s research portfolio by building a community of patients and interested parties who can partner with researchers now and in the future.
With more than 600 awards focused on a variety of stakeholders, health topics, engagement strategies, and regions, the Engagement Award program relies on timely analysis of the program portfolio to identify portfolio gaps and topics for future funding opportunities.
Solution
Westat developed a database to classify Engagement Award projects on multiple dimensions to help PCORI sift through all its information. The Engagement Award database contains categorized information from letters of intent to applications and letters of rejection.
PCORI requires continuous updates to the database as a strategy to track applicants’ intended projects, methodologies, and stakeholder groups and to examine trends in funded projects in the portfolio over time.
Westat is building on earlier work for PCORI to build a more comprehensive coding—or taxonomy—system to facilitate description of the program portfolio to internal staff and external stakeholders.
Results
With the data readily available, PCORI can better understand what it has funded in aggregate, where gaps in fundings remain, and how to fill those gaps.
This project was completed by Insight Policy Research before acquisition by Westat.
Senior Expert Contact
Meg Tucker
Principal Research Associate
-
Perspective
Westat Work Shines at 2024 APHSA EMWB ConferenceSeptember 2024
Westat human services experts recently presented at the American Public Human Services Association (APHSA)’s Economic Mobility and Well-Being (EMWB) Conference in Portland, Oregon. At the…
-
Perspective
Westat Tools Help Protect Child PassengersSeptember 2024
Vehicle crashes are a major cause of injuries and fatalities among children, a problem safety advocates in the U.S. acknowledge and work to minimize by…
-
Perspective
International Overdose Awareness Day: August 31, 2024August 2024
Overdose continues to impact the lives of so many around the world. The theme of the 2024 International Overdose Awareness Day, August 31, 2024, is…