Do policy-makers find commissioned rapid reviews useful?
Open accessAbstract
BACKGROUND: Rapid reviews are increasingly used by policy agencies to access relevant research in short timeframes. Despite the growing number of programmes, little is known about how rapid reviews are used by health policy agencies. This study examined whether and how rapid reviews commissioned using a knowledge brokering programme were used by Australian policy-makers. METHODS: This study used interview data to examine the use of 139 rapid reviews by health policy agencies that were commissioned between 2006 and 2015. Transcripts were coded to identify how rapid reviews were used, the type of policy processes in which they were used, what evidence of use was provided and what reasons were given when rapid reviews were not used. Fisher's exact test was used to assess variation between types of agencies. RESULTS: Overall, 89% of commissioned rapid reviews were used by the commissioning agencies and 338 separate instances of use were identified, namely, on average, three uses per review. Policy-makers used reviews primarily to determine the details of a policy or programme, identify priorities for future action or investment, negotiate interjurisdictional decisions, evaluate alternative solutions for a policy problem, and communicate information to stakeholders. Some variation in use was observed across agencies. Reasons for non-use were related to changes in organisational structures, resources or key personnel in the commissioning agencies, or changes in the broader political environment. CONCLUSIONS: This study found that almost all rapid reviews had been used by the agencies who commissioned them, primarily in policy and programme development, agenda-setting, and to communicate information to stakeholders. Reviews were used mostly in instrumental and conceptual ways and there was little evidence of symbolic use. Variations in use were identified across agencies. The findings suggest that commissioned rapid reviews are an effective means of providing timely relevant research for use in policy processes and that review findings may be applied in a variety of ways.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Evidence indicates that policymakers are increasingly using rapid reviews in their daily decision-making.
“Evidence suggests that policymakers are increasingly using RRs in their daily decision-making [[9], [10], [11], [12]].”
From Cochrane Rapid Reviews Methods Group offers evidence-informed guidance to conduct rapid reviews (2021) · cites this paper as [9]
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
The citation lists haven’t been fetched yet
References 33 · Cited by 41
- Authors
- Moore, G., Redman, S., Rudge, S., & Haynes, A.
- Affiliations
- The University of Sydney (AU)
- Sax Institute (AU)
- Corresponding author
- Moore, Gabriel
- Venue
- Health Research Policy and Systems
- Published
- 2018-02-26
- Volume
- 16
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 17-17
- ISSN
- 1478-4505 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC5828139
- OpenAlex
- W2796169261
- Cited by
- 41
- References
- 33
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 6 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 11 · 2019: 3 · 2018: 3
- FWCI
- 7.25
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by
- Locations
- Health Research Policy and Systems (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Funders
- National Health and Medical Research Council (573122)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Health Policy Implementation Science
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Management Science and Operations Research › Evaluation and Performance Assessment
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty › Meta-analysis and systematic reviews
- Keywords
- rapid review, policy makers, knowledge brokering, evidence use, evidence-informed policy, agenda setting, stakeholder communication, Australian health policy
- MeSH terms
- Administrative Personnel, Attitude of Health Personnel, Australia, Communication, Decision Making, Health Planning, Health Policy, Humans, Policy Making, Surveys and Questionnaires, Research, Review Literature as Topic, Program Development, Evidence-Based Medicine, Knowledge, Information Seeking Behavior
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
