Lessons from working across fields to develop a framework for informed choices

In late 2018, Iain Chalmers, Andy Oxman and others from the Informed Health Choices team convened a cross-field forum to develop a generic framework of key concepts for thinking critically about claims, research and choices about interventions, with the aim of supporting ‘informed choices’. We define an informed choice as one that is based on critical understanding of the relevant available evidence. This paper describes the process of that cross-field engagement, and reflects on how consensus was reached on the generic framework. Working in an alliance of 24 researchers from across fields to develop the Key Concepts for Informed Choices framework, we learned three lessons about cross-field working: (1) there was much agreement, despite diversity of views and experiences; (2) the applications of our work were broader than we could have imagined; and (3) we identified a wide range of problems that we have in common when making informed choices. Here we describe our experience of working together to develop the framework, and draw out lessons for others who may be involved in similar cross-field initiatives

Key Concepts for making informed Choices

Teach people to think critically about claims and comparisons — they will make better decisions

Dataset AUS A&B EBP Survey-cleaned.sav

<b>Survey data of 210 management practitioners in Australia regarding attitudes and barriers towards evidence-based practice in management. </b

Dataset Dutch-Belgian A&B EBP Survey-total.sav

<b>Survey data of 875 management practitioners in The Netherlands and Belgium regarding attitudes and barriers towards evidence-based practice in management. </b

Dataset UK A&B Survey-cleaned.sav

<b>Survey data of 1,358 management practitioners in the UK regarding attitudes and barriers towards evidence-based practice in management. </b

Dataset A&B EBP Survey-combined.sav

Combined survey data of 2,789 management practitioners in the UK, US, Australia, The Netherlands and Belgium regarding attitudes and barriers towards evidence-based practice in management.<br