Researching in-betweens: blurring the boundaries of mainstream and marginal education research

In education research the troubling binary of the mainstream-marginal divergence has created new possibilities for undertaking careful and considered research within various contexts. It has opened up research opportunities that are neither mainstream, nor marginal, but something else altogether – the in-between spaces. It is here that we find some of the most exciting potential for difference to be explored and affirmed in education research

Deworming children for soil-transmitted helminths in low and middle-income countries: Systematic review and individual participant data network meta-analysis

Intestinal parasites affect millions of children globally. We aimed to assess effects of deworming children on nutritional and cognitive outcomes across potential effect modifiers using individual participant data (IPD). We searched multiple databases to 27 March 2018, grey literature, and other sources. We included randomised and quasi randomised trials of deworming compared to placebo or other nutritional interventions with data on baseline infection. We used a random-effects network meta-analysis with IPD and assessed overall quality, following a pre-specified protocol. We received IPD from 19 trials of STH deworming. Overall risk of bias was low. There were no statistically significant subgroup effects across age, sex, nutritional status or infection intensity for each type of STH. These analyses showed that children with moderate or heavy intensity infections, deworming for STH may increase weight gain (very low certainty). The added value of this review is an exploration of effects on growth and cognition in children with moderate to heavy infections as well as replicating prior systematic review results of small effects at the population level. Policy implications are that complementary public health strategies need to be assessed and considered to achieve growth and cognition benefits for children in helminth endemic areas

Protocol: Conflict of interest issues when engaging stakeholders in health and healthcare guideline development: a systematic review

This is the protocol for a Campbell systematic review. The overall objective of this study is to gather and summarize the existing literature on conflict of interest issues when engaging stakeholders in guideline development

Protocol: Barriers and facilitators to stakeholder engagement in health guideline development: a qualitative evidence synthesis

Background There is a need for the development of comprehensive, global, evidence-based guidance for stakeholder engagement in guideline development. Stakeholders are any individual or group who is responsible for or affected by health- and healthcare-related decisions. This includes patients, the public, providers of health care and policymakers for example. As part of the guidance development process, Multi-Stakeholder Engagement (MuSE) Consortium set out to conduct four concurrent systematic reviews to summarise the evidence on: (1) existing guidance for stakeholder engagement in guideline development, (2) barriers and facilitators to stakeholder engagement in guideline development, (3) managing conflicts of interest in stakeholder engagement in guideline development and (4) measuring the impact of stakeholder engagement in guideline development. This protocol addresses the second systematic review in the series. Objectives The objective of this review is to identify and synthesise the existing evidence on barriers and facilitators to stakeholder engagement in health guideline development. We will address this objective through two research questions: (1) What are the barriers to multi-stakeholder engagement in health guideline development across any of the 18 steps of the GIN-McMaster checklist? (2) What are the facilitators to multi-stakeholder engagement in health guideline development across any of the 18 steps of the GIN-McMaster checklist? Search Methods A comprehensive search strategy will be developed and peer-reviewed in consultation with a medical librarian. We will search the following databases: MEDLINE, Cumulative Index to Nursing & Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), EMBASE, PsycInfo, Scopus, and Sociological Abstracts. To identify grey literature, we will search the websites of agencies who actively engage stakeholder groups such as the AHRQ, Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Strategy for Patient-Oriented Research (SPOR), INVOLVE, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and the PCORI. We will also search the websites of guideline-producing agencies, such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, Australia's National Health Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and the WHO. We will invite members of the team to suggest grey literature sources and we plan to broaden the search by soliciting suggestions via social media, such as Twitter. Selection Criteria We will include empirical qualitative and mixed-method primary research studies which qualitatively report on the barriers or facilitators to stakeholder engagement in health guideline development. The population of interest is stakeholders in health guideline development. Building on previous work, we have identified 13 types of stakeholders whose input can enhance the relevance and uptake of guidelines: Patients, caregivers and patient advocates; Public; Providers of health care; Payers of health services; Payers of research; Policy makers; Program managers; Product makers; Purchasers; Principal investigators and their research teams; and Peer-review editors/publishers. Eligible studies must describe stakeholder engagement at any of the following steps of the GIN-McMaster Checklist for Guideline Development. Data Collection and Analysis All identified citations from electronic databases will be imported into Covidence software for screening and selection. Documents identified through our grey literature search will be managed and screened using an Excel spreadsheet. A two-part study selection process will be used for all identified citations: (1) a title and abstract review and (2) full-text review. At each stage, teams of two review authors will independently assess all potential studies in duplicate using a priori inclusion and exclusion criteria. Data will be extracted by two review authors independently and in duplicate according to a standardised data extraction form. Main Results The results of this review will be used to inform the development of guidance for multi-stakeholder engagement in guideline development and implementation. This guidance will be official GRADE (Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation) Working Group guidance. The GRADE system is internationally recognised as a standard for guideline development. The findings of this review will assist organisations who develop healthcare, public health and health policy guidelines, such as the World Health Organization, to involve multiple stakeholders in the guideline development process to ensure the development of relevant, high quality and transparent guidelines

Protocol for the development of guidance for stakeholder engagement in health and healthcare guideline development and implementation

Stakeholder engagement has become widely accepted as a necessary component of guideline development and implementation. While frameworks for developing guidelines express the need for those potentially affected by guideline recommendations to be involved in their development, there is a lack of consensus on how this should be done in practice. Further, there is a lack of guidance on how to equitably and meaningfully engage multiple stakeholders. We aim to develop guidance for the meaningful and equitable engagement of multiple stakeholders in guideline development and implementation. METHODS: This will be a multi-stage project. The first stage is to conduct a series of four systematic reviews. These will (1) describe existing guidance and methods for stakeholder engagement in guideline development and implementation, (2) characterize barriers and facilitators to stakeholder engagement in guideline development and implementation, (3) explore the impact of stakeholder engagement on guideline development and implementation, and (4) identify issues related to conflicts of interest when engaging multiple stakeholders in guideline development and implementation. DISCUSSION: We will collaborate with our multiple and diverse stakeholders to develop guidance for multi-stakeholder engagement in guideline development and implementation. We will use the results of the systematic reviews to develop a candidate list of draft guidance recommendations and will seek broad feedback on the draft guidance via an online survey of guideline developers and external stakeholders. An invited group of representatives from all stakeholder groups will discuss the results of the survey at a consensus meeting which will inform the development of the final guidance papers. Our overall goal is to improve the development of guidelines through meaningful and equitable multi-stakeholder engagement, and subsequently to improve health outcomes and reduce inequities in health

Mass deworming for improving health and cognition of children in endemic helminth areas: A systematic review and individual participant data network meta‐analysis

Background: Soil transmitted (or intestinal) helminths and schistosomes affect millions of children worldwide. Objectives: To use individual participant data network meta-analysis (NMA) to explore the effects of different types and frequency of deworming drugs on anaemia, cognition and growth across potential effect modifiers. Search Methods: We developed a search strategy with an information scientist to search MEDLINE, CINAHL, LILACS, Embase, the Cochrane Library, Econlit, Internet Documents in Economics Access Service (IDEAS), Public Affairs Information Service (PAIS), Social Services Abstracts, Global Health CABI and CAB Abstracts up to March 27, 2018. We also searched grey literature, websites, contacted authors and screened references of relevant systematic reviews. Selection Criteria: We included randomised and quasirandomised deworming trials in children for deworming compared to placebo or other interventions with data on baseline infection. Data Collection and Analysis: We conducted NMA with individual participant data (IPD), using a frequentist approach for random-effects NMA. The covariates were: age, sex, weight, height, haemoglobin and infection intensity. The effect estimate chosen was the mean difference for the continuous outcome of interest. Results: We received data from 19 randomized controlled trials with 31,945 participants. Overall risk of bias was low. There were no statistically significant subgroup effects across any of the potential effect modifiers. However, analyses showed that there may be greater effects on weight for moderate to heavily infected children (very low certainty evidence). Authors' Conclusions: This analysis reinforces the case against mass deworming at a population-level, finding little effect on nutritional status or cognition. However, children with heavier intensity infections may benefit more. We urge the global community to adopt calls to make data available in open repositories to facilitate IPD analyses such as this, which aim to assess effects for the most vulnerable individuals

Access to justice during the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented many challenges for our legal system. The courts have had to adapt to the unprecedented change in circumstances. One of the most dramatic changes to occur was the introduction of remote court hearings. This report, jointly authored by the Open University and Northumbria University, seeks to explore this transition and the impact it has had on access to justice. The Open University Policy Clinic is part of the Open Justice Centre. Open Justice provides free legal advice and education to members of the public in a variety of legal areas. In 2019, Open Justice established the Policy Clinic to undertake research on behalf of organisations and charities, aiming to influence policy and law reform. The Northumbria Student Law Office was set up in 1981 and offers free legal advice to members of the public on a range of different areas. The Policy Clinic within the Student Law Office was set up in the 2018/2019 academic year with the aim to undertake research influencing policy and law reform. We began our research by gathering data from a sample of 80 Crown Courts and 77 County Courts. In addition to this, we conducted fieldwork in the Court of Protection. This involved all members of the team requesting access as public observers to remote hearings. In total, 25 hearings were attended. There was also a review of existing literature surrounding remote hearings. This report will identify the themes arising from our research that have a direct influence on access to justice. We will discuss the findings from our research alongside the existing data, and comparisons will be made between these two data sets. We believe this report is particularly important as we enter a post-COVID-19 world and questions are being raised as to whether the changes that have occurred during the pandemic should be implemented permanently. The aim of this report is to gain an insight into the effect of the pandemic and to assess the practicality of online courts

Mass deworming for improving health and cognition of children in endemic helminth areas: A systematic review and individual participant data network meta‐analysis

BackgroundSoil transmitted (or intestinal) helminths and schistosomes affect millions of children worldwide.ObjectivesTo use individual participant data network meta‐analysis (NMA) to explore the effects of different types and frequency of deworming drugs on anaemia, cognition and growth across potential effect modifiers.Search MethodsWe developed a search strategy with an information scientist to search MEDLINE, CINAHL, LILACS, Embase, the Cochrane Library, Econlit, Internet Documents in Economics Access Service (IDEAS), Public Affairs Information Service (PAIS), Social Services Abstracts, Global Health CABI and CAB Abstracts up to March 27, 2018. We also searched grey literature, websites, contacted authors and screened references of relevant systematic reviews.Selection CriteriaWe included randomised and quasirandomised deworming trials in children for deworming compared to placebo or other interventions with data on baseline infection.Data Collection and AnalysisWe conducted NMA with individual participant data (IPD), using a frequentist approach for random‐effects NMA. The covariates were: age, sex, weight, height, haemoglobin and infection intensity. The effect estimate chosen was the mean difference for the continuous outcome of interest.ResultsWe received data from 19 randomized controlled trials with 31,945 participants. Overall risk of bias was low. There were no statistically significant subgroup effects across any of the potential effect modifiers. However, analyses showed that there may be greater effects on weight for moderate to heavily infected children (very low certainty evidence).Authors' ConclusionsThis analysis reinforces the case against mass deworming at a population‐level, finding little effect on nutritional status or cognition. However, children with heavier intensity infections may benefit more. We urge the global community to adopt calls to make data available in open repositories to facilitate IPD analyses such as this, which aim to assess effects for the most vulnerable individuals.</div

Fostering effective and sustainable scientific collaboration and knowledge exchange: a workshop-based approach to establish a national ecological observatory network (NEON) domain-specific user group

The decision to establish a network of researchers centers on identifying shared research goals. Ecologically specific regions, such as the USA’s National Ecological Observatory Network’s (NEON’s) eco-climatic domains, are ideal locations by which to assemble researchers with a diverse range of expertise but focused on the same set of ecological challenges. The recently established Great Lakes User Group (GLUG) is NEON’s first domain specific ensemble of researchers, whose goal is to address scientific and technical issues specific to the Great Lakes Domain 5 (D05) by using NEON data to enable advancement of ecosystem science. Here, we report on GLUG’s kick off workshop, which comprised lightning talks, keynote presentations, breakout brainstorming sessions and field site visits. Together, these activities created an environment to foster and strengthen GLUG and NEON user engagement. The tangible outcomes of the workshop exceeded initial expectations and include plans for (i) two journal articles (in addition to this one), (ii) two potential funding proposals, (iii) an assignable assets request and (iv) development of classroom activities using NEON datasets. The success of this 2.5-day event was due to a combination of factors, including establishment of clear objectives, adopting engaging activities and providing opportunities for active participation and inclusive collaboration with diverse participants. Given the success of this approach we encourage others, wanting to organize similar groups of researchers, to adopt the workshop framework presented here which will strengthen existing collaborations and foster new ones, together with raising greater awareness and promotion of use of NEON datasets. Establishing domain specific user groups will help bridge the scale gap between site level data collection and addressing regional and larger ecological challenges