How to tell a story (of your research) to anyone – you are Batman

By Anneliese Poetz, KT Manager, Kids Brain Health Network

Almost two years ago I took a creative writing course. I didn’t expect at that time that it would be so relevant to Knowledge Translation, but I have come to realize that it really is.

I remember during graduate school, as researchers-in-training we were taught to be able to ‘tell the story’ in our data, meaning, how think analytically or be able to describe the patterns in your data.  Being able to tell the story that your data were telling you was necessary no matter whether it was a quantitative (statistical analysis of numerical data) project or qualitative (analysis of words, text).  But beyond this, when it comes time to tell the story of your research project as a whole, you need to become Batman.

“Becoming Batman” means you can think of yourself as the protagonist (see #4 below) in the story of your research project when you are developing your messaging for your KT products.  The KT Core recently produced an Infographic Guide. It requires the research team to sketch out the ‘story’ they want to tell about their research.  It occurred to me post-production that maybe some further pointers were needed for how to do that, and became the inspiration for this blog post.

Whenever we create KT products, it is usually the hope that it will inspire and inform changes; either in policy, practice or individual behaviours and attitudes.  In my creative writing class we were taught about ‘the poetics’ or the 4 ‘unities’ or ‘elements’ of any great story, no matter how it is told: in a book, a play, a movie, etc.  In each great (popular) story, all 4 elements are present.  These four elements and how they relate to telling a compelling story about your research that motivates people to take action are:

1)  Time: how much time is being covered in your story?  With respect to your research project, how long as the problem (see: #4 antagonist) under study been an issue?

You need a containable frame of time.  What was the time frame for your study?  Is there a timeline?

Was there a short timeline within which you had to solve this problem? What were the macro segments of time (the overall timeline from beginning to end) and what were the micro segments of time (time it took to interview respondents)?

You need to decide what will be the beginning of the story, and what will be the end. Make the time frame clear. Will you start to tell the story from before the project began, when you consulted with stakeholders to find out what they needed and formulated the research questions in order to figure out what the solutions could be?  Or will you start telling the story from when you successfully received a research grant to investigate your questions?  Is this something that occurred in the past? Over the past week? Over years? Are you telling the story in past tense or present tense?

Be aware of how much time (e.g. in a video) or space (in an infographic) you have to tell your story – if you only have a small amount of time or space, you are bound by that so keep the story within these constraints.  You can’t cover everything, and the amount of time or space will never be enough. But make a decision what you actually want to cover.

2)  Place:  In your story, where is your research taking place? Place is very important to the story, is it clearly defined or mentioned?  How has ‘place’ affected you and your role in the story of your research?  What are the people like?  How has it influenced who you are, how you do your work?  Make sure your interaction with ‘place’ is part of the story you are telling.

 

3)  Antagonist (villain): you can’t write a story without an antagonist, the antagonist is absolutely crucial to your story.  But in your research project you won’t be talking about how (you as) Batman defeated the Joker. An antagonist in a research project can be an illness, disease, societal issue you want to understand or solve, or a phenomenon (like a discovery you want to make).  Describe what your antagonist is.  What is the problem you are investigating?  Is your antagonist internal (you are struggling to overcome your own curiosity, your personal issues and/or health problems) or external (are you investigating a community or societal issue, an environmental plague, outer space, etc.)?  It should be readily apparent to the reader what it is you are up against.

How did you (or are you planning to) overcome it? This will be your research methods.

4)  Protagonist: The protagonist is the ‘hero’ or main character. This would be you, the researcher.  You are Batman.  You and your research team are working towards overcoming the ‘antagonist’ or problem you are investigating.

How are you different now at the end of the project than you were at the beginning? What did you learn? Discover?

You can’t have a little of both – it is absolute – you either overcome the antagonist or you succumb to it.  Did you overcome the antagonist (solve the problem you were investigating, make the discovery, answer your research questions) or did you succumb to it (the project did not yield results and further research is needed)? In storytelling this is known as the cathartic ‘release’, the recipient of your story is waiting to see whether it is going to be one or the other, and gets the same amount of pleasure out of the story whether you succeeded or failed. The reason why people are interested in your story is to find out what happened, to get that cathartic experience. In order to motivate the reader to action, you need to find a way to get that emotional reaction.

You have a fascinating research project. The trick is to be able to convey what’s important to you about your research, to someone else.  What is at stake for you? For society? Make sure the stakes are high enough, this makes the story more compelling.  What would happen if you hadn’t done this research project?

Food for thought for the next time you create an infographic (or really any KT product). What is the story you are telling? Does your ‘story’ evoke an emotional reaction? If the answer is yes, you will be more likely to motivate the reader toward action (e.g. changes in policy, practice, and/or personal behaviour) and isn’t that the reason why we do KT?

 

The “Guide of Guides” Series for Knowledge Translation

This blog post was written by Anneliese Poetz, KT Manager for KBHN. It was originally published as a guest post on the ResearchImpact blog (Source: The “Guide of Guides” Series for Knowledge Translation) it is reposted here with permission.

Kids Brain Health Network (formerly NeuroDevNet) is a Network of Centres of Excellence funded by the Federal government of Canada. There are three discovery programs focused on the early diagnosis and treatment of: Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, Autism Spectrum Disorder, and Cerebral Palsy. Three Cores serve the researchers and trainees within the Network as well as the other Cores: Neuroethics, Neuroinformatics, and Knowledge Translation (KT). The KT Core is hosted by York University’s award winning Knowledge Mobilization (KMb) Unit and provides 7 services within the Network:

1- Knowledge Brokering
2- Support for KT Events
3- Support for KT Products
4- KT Capacity Building
5- Evaluating KT
6- Support KT Planning
7- Stakeholder Engagement

A couple of years ago, one of our researchers asked us for guidance for using social media for KT. We realized while searching for what was ‘already out there’ that there are a lot of guides for social media, but not all of them are targeted towards use by researchers. In collaboration with York University’s KMb Unit, we produced our first “Guide of Guides” that is a compilation of carefully selected and vetted guides for social media that are relevant. The “Guide of Guides” format resembles an annotated bibliography, where the reference information is provided for each guide along with a summary paragraph about the tool, how it can be used and why you may wish to use it. The “Social Media Guide of Guides” became the start of a series. This post serves as a “guide” to the “Guide of Guides” series.

Soon after, we produced the “KT Planning Guide of Guides”.

We were doing a search for existing KT planning guides because another project we were working on was to provide KT planning support for 4 key projects within the Network and we wanted to see if there was a tool out there that we could use. What we ended up doing was creating our own, that was specific to our own needs (the Hybrid KT Planning and Project Management tool). However, we had conducted an exhaustive search of existing KT Planning tools so we reviewed and vetted them for quality and relevance, and created a similar “Guide of Guides” for KT Planning.

We received several requests from researchers for support and resources for creating infographics. After searching for existing guides, we realized that surprisingly there weren’t any guides for researchers about infographics, only blog posts. So, we vetted the blog posts, searched the literature and wrote a comprehensive evidence-based guide, followed by an annotated list of what we deemed were the best blog posts on infographics. Some blog posts pointed to examples of infographics, while others explained step by step how to create an infographic and what tools were available (usually free, online) for creating your own. While the content wasn’t really a “Guide of Guides” per se, we titled this product the “Infographic Guide of Guides”. We were fortunate to have one project team pilot test a draft of this guide and provide feedback before it was finalized and posted. This is the first guide that included an appendix with form-fillable fields to help research teams work through the process of creating an infographic.

Finally, we produced a “Stakeholder Engagement Guide of Guides”. There are many guides for doing stakeholder engagement, and it is becoming more important for KBHN to do stakeholder engagement in a more formalized way. After searching, reviewing, and vetting guides available online, we created a similarly formatted “Guide of Guides” for stakeholder engagement that also included a form-fillable appendix to help facilitate planning. Since there are many different reasons (goals/objectives) for engaging with stakeholders and many different formats for doing so, we created a summary table at the beginning of the guide that separates the types of engagement into three tables: mostly sharing information with stakeholders, sharing and listening, and mostly listening. The list of specific formats within each category was visually coded so that the user can easily find the corresponding guide for detailed information.

The KT Core may produce one more “Guide of Guides” on evaluation methods for KT.

How do you do stakeholder engagement to inform research? SE Guide developed by KT Core

by: Anneliese Poetz, KT Manager, Kids Brain Health Network (formerly NeuroDevNet)

The Kids Brain Health Network (formerly NeuroDevNet) has focused efforts on stakeholder engagement for informing its future directions.  To aid in the process, the KT Core at York University has developed a Stakeholder Engagement Guide of Guides which is the third in the series (the first was the Social Media Guide of Guides, second was the KT Planning Guide of Guides).

Someone recently asked me, how can you do integrated Knowledge Translation (iKT)? First, we must understand iKT, it “is about:

• Bringing the creators and users of knowledge together for meaningful engagement;
• Making users aware of research evidence AND researchers aware of information needs of society;
• Co-producing knowledge, to increase relevance and likelihood of application of findings.

Knowledge users are:

• Individuals likely to be able to use research findings to make informed decisions about health policies and practices
• Policy/decision-makers, clinicians, health professionals, caregivers, patients, industry, not-for-profit, etc.”

CIHR goes on to say that organizations can enable iKT by doing the following:

– use clear and consistent terminology among partners and knowledge users

– plan for increased need for flexibility/time for knowledge user involvement

– take a knowledge-user perspective in designing programs/initiatives, evaluating applications, etc.

– facilitate connections between researchers and knowledge users such as workshops, or online portals

– support capacity building through presentations, creation/sharing of resources

– incorporate iKT into operational templates/frameworks.

If we look at the statement “take a knowledge-user perspective in designing programs…” it can be interpreted to mean that iKT can happen without stakeholder engagement; in this case, the organization would step into their knowledge-user’s shoes, but without asking them directly what they need. However, this does not optimize the iKT approach. In order to maximize the benefit to society, or ‘impact’ of your work, it is necessary to engage with your stakeholders.

There are several methods for engaging with your stakeholders to inform your various activities including research and KT. This blog post introduces the new Stakeholder Engagement Guide of Guides created by the KT Core. The Guide begins with a chart that identifies the range of stakeholder engagement methods based on your goal.  There are three categories: “to tell” (the goal is mainly on providing information), “to tell and listen” (the goal is a mixture of providing information and asking questions of stakeholders/encouraging discussion), and “to listen” (the goal is to ask questions of stakeholders and receive their input either verbally or in written format).  The Guide also contains an annotated bibliography of resources for researchers to be able to engage their stakeholders (whoever is directly or indirectly affected by their work such as: patients, clients, policymakers, frontline workers, etc.) in their projects in a number of ways.

Most of the resources within the SE Guide of Guides recommend similar core elements:

1) Clearly define your goal/craft a purpose statement. Why do you need to engage with your stakeholders? Are you aiming to refine the design of a new research project to more accurately respond to the needs of stakeholders, or are you at the end of a research project and would like to elicit the preferences of your knowledge users for what KT products they can use (e.g. infographic or clear language summary?).

2) State your objectives. What is it exactly, that you would like to accomplish from this activity? The objectives should help you achieve your goal.

3) Map your stakeholders. Who do you need to invite? How will they help you accomplish your goal/objectives?

4) Choose the stakeholder engagement method you will use. Sometimes a survey is good enough, but other times you may need deep discussion and analysis of issues from your stakeholders.  The budget you have allocated for stakeholder engagement will also determine what you can do.

5) Evaluate. Did it work? Did you accomplish your goal/objectives?  Think about what else you want to know. You may also wish to ask a question about preferences for ongoing communication afterwards.

Although stakeholder engagement *isn’t* a research project per se, it should be approached with the same mindset you would apply to a research project in the sense that the method, activities, and questions for your stakeholders that you choose depends on what your goal and objectives are. To do it right is important for building and maintaining meaningful relationships with stakeholders.  By taking the time to plan appropriately, and make sure you are making the best use of everyone’s time, it shows respect to your knowledge users and goes a long way towards building good relationships.  From an iKT perspective, showing stakeholders you have listened to what they have said, and responding to their feedback appropriately through modifications to your work, maximizes the potential uptake and implementation of your work.  This, in turn, will also have impact beyond the individual stakeholders you involved in your specific activities, and broaden the benefit of your work to society.

If you are a KBHN (NeuroDevNet) researcher or trainee and would like help planning your stakeholder engagement activities, please do not hesitate to contact the KT Core.

Stakeholder Engagement for Research Uptake / La participation des intervenants dans l’exploitation de la recherche

This week’s guest post comes from York University’s ResearchImpact Blog, MobilizeThis! It was first published on April 22, 2016 and is reposted here with permission. 

Source: Stakeholder Engagement for Research Uptake / La participation des intervenants dans l’exploitation de la recherche

by: David Phipps, KT Lead, NeuroDevNet

Last updated in 2013 (so not new, but new to me), DFID UK has produced a guide to aid in research uptake. This guide helps researchers work with stakeholders to maximize the opportunities for research to be taken up and used by organizations making new products, developing policies and/or delivering services. Using this guide will help facilitate stakeholder engagement to enable research uptake.

Le ministère du Développement international du Royaume-Uni, le DFID, a mis à jour en 2013 (pas franchement nouveau, mais pour moi, oui) un guide pour faciliter l’exploitation des travaux de recherche. Ce guide aide les chercheurs à collaborer avec les intervenants, dans le but de maximiser les occasions d’utiliser la recherche dans la fabrication de nouveaux produits, l’élaboration de politiques ou la prestation de services. Grâce à ce guide, on aura plus de facilité à convaincre les intervenants d’exploiter activement les résultats de la recherche.

We all know (or we all should know) it is important to engage end users (especially lived experience) upstream in the research program. How else do you know your research is going to help meet the needs of people who can benefit from the policies, products and services that are enabled by your research?

The private sector calls this consumer driven design.

Communicators always advocate knowing your audience.

Knowledge mobilizers call this stakeholder engagement.

There is literature on stakeholder engagement (see KMb journal club post). There are methods like the policy dialogue (see another KMb journal club post). Jonathan Weiss (CIHR Chair in Autism Spectrum Disorders Treatment and Care Research, York University) embeds stakeholder engagement in the work of his Chair and reports annually on his efforts (see his 2014 Annual Report as an example).

But where is the help to help the rest of us?

A researcher in the NeuroDevNet network recently forwarded a guide for research uptake. Research uptake is that moment when a non-academic research partner seeks to take the results of the research in house to inform decisions about their own policies, products and services. This is a critical step in mediating the pathway from research to impact. And effective stakeholder engagement can facilitate this moment of uptake.

Thanks to DFID (UK Department for International Development) this guide book and checklist (yes, there is even a checklist!) are posted at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/research-uptake-guidance

As instructed by this guide, effective stakeholder engagement has four stages each with three or four activities described in each stage:

1. Stakeholder engagement: working through informal networks and mapping out and connecting with relevant stakeholders

2. Capacity building: not all non-academic research partners have the capacity to take up research evidence. Building capacity for end user uptake is an important element…but is this the job of the researcher or possibly for allied intermediary organizations?

3. Communicating: synthesizing results, planning communications and publishing research results in accessible formats are all important to facilitate research uptake.

4. Monitoring and Evaluation: create a logic model including indicators to measure progress at each stage, gather data and feedback results into your research and research uptake processes.

DFID provides a note on advocacy and influencing decisions in partner organizations. DFID “encourages programs to foster evidence informed discussions of research evidence and to encourage decision makers to make use of the full range if research evidence on a given topic. However, research programs should not be lobbying for particular policy changes based on their research results.”

Really? I believe research institutions need to strive for neutrality but researchers themselves are often highly invested in a particular policy position. Why else do media channels ask academic researchers to comment on government positions? While research methods strive to remove bias from the evidence, that unbiased evidence is not necessarily value free from the researcher’s perspective.

And a note to ResearchImpact-Réseau Impact Recherche universities and other institutions with a knowledge mobilization mandate…. we don’t have discipline specific stakeholders but we do have institutional stakeholders such as United Way, community associations, municipal and provincial partners, Chambers of Commerce, etc. These institutional stakeholders should be part of our own stakeholder engagement efforts.

Thanks to Anneliese Poetz, Manager KT Core, NeuroDevNet for passing this along and for writing about her own tips for stakeholder engagement on the NeuroDevNet Blog, KT Core-ner.

 

What do the acronyms TEDx, ASD and iKT have in common?

Source: What do the acronyms TEDx, ASD and iKT have in common?

This week’s guest post comes from the ASD Mental Health site, Dr. Jonathan Weiss’ Blog. It was first published on April 13, 2016 and is reposted here with permission. 

by Drs. Jonathan Lai & Jonathan Weiss

On Saturday May 28^th, the Chair in ASD Treatment and Care Research^[1] will be hosting Spectrum, a TEDxYorkUSalon focussing on concerns relevant to transition-age youth and to adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

When the Chair was first launched, we asked stakeholders (e.g. people with ASD, clinicians, family members, policymakers, and researchers) how they wanted to be engaged with, both in terms of what we’re doing, and what was going on in the Canadian field of autism research. The message was clear: we need more than one approach, for multiple types of audiences, including those we already knew as well as those in the autism community we had not yet reached. So how best to develop a dynamic, accessible, and efficient way of exchanging knowledge about autism across so many different perspectives? This is where TEDx comes in.

Our upcoming event is part of our strategy of innovative knowledge mobilization and stakeholder engagement. Since knowledge translation is a learning process among stakeholders with different perspectives and expertise, we have involved people with ASD, parents, researchers, educators, policy makers, and service providers as presenters. The presenters will give short 8-minute talks which will be placed online following the event and made freely accessible to the public.

The well-known and appreciated TED format is all about developing, refining, and sharing ideas in an entertaining way, both for those present in the physical audience, as well as those in a virtual audience who can access the talks worldwide. It’s a format, and a brand, that has tremendous recognition and a demonstrated ability to break down complex knowledge into a format that can appeal to a wide range of audiences: it’s open to everyone. Since our goal is share the knowledge that’s been generated in the Canadian autism community openly, we are creating broadly appealing content that will be available through the TEDx in-person and online platforms. We believe it will be an effective method to bring multiple perspectives together and listen to one another.

How can you plan your own TEDx event?

A TEDx event is not an easy thing to coordinate or one that can be developed in only a few months time. You will need dedicated personnel; we have one person (JL) who is dedicated to coordinating all aspects of the day over a 12 month period, for about one day a week.  Our timeline was as follows, based on our capacity:

Timeline (# months in advance of event date)	Task to be completed
10 months	Read TEDx guidelines, craft vision and goals
9 months	Find a venue and date, have an budget
8 months	Curate speakers, identify sponsors and partners
7 months	Construct a program (running order)
6 months	Form your teams (A/V, volunteers)
5 months	Coach speakers (monthly emails, one-on-one sessions)
5 months	Build a website (marketing)
2 month	Promote to your audience (marketing)

First, craft your vision and goals (10 months ahead of time). It’s important to think through and articulate your vision (how would you define success?) and then identify how you can evaluate whether and to what extent you achieved your goals. Our vision and goals were to: 1) make topics of ASD research accessible, 2) build enthusiasm about research and 3) expand reach globally to people living with ASD, students and service providers. This shaped the types of questions we asked on our evaluation forms. For example, we hope that the TEDxYorkUSalon event will lead to greater excitement, optimism and familiarity about Canadian research in ASD and with regard to how people view ASD more generally. We ask questions about these topics in an optional questionnaire when they register, and will do so again after the event, to measure individual change.

As you begin this goal setting and visioning process, read the guidelines to know what goals are feasible. The TEDx Organizer’s Manual had many helpful tips and a step-by-step guide on how to organize an event like this properly. Since this is our first time, we had a steep learning curve. There are various guidelines for the different types of events. TEDx licenses are given to people based on location (e.g. TEDxNewYork, TEDxToyko, TEDxUniversityofLeeds, TEDxYorkU) and there are different guidelines for each event type with respect to: the number of attendees, types of sponsorships, branding of the event etc. We decided to run a Salon event under TEDxYorkU – a smaller event run under approved TEDx license holders because it allows us to explore a more specific topic rather than a general theme. Your vision and goals must align with the type of event – as that determines the structure that enables what you can do.

Ultimately it’s crucial to stick with TED’s strictly prescribed format, which can be difficult for us researchers who are used to having full control over the design and execution of our own events. By choosing to go with the TEDx format, it meant letting go of some of that control. We learned that we had to be flexible – working with a brand with licensing guidelines, we had to adapt each time we were constrained by requirements. For instance, we had to ensure the number of presenters and attendees were approved and that sponsors were not related / perceived to influence/bias talk content. Further, we had to figure out how to brand the event properly – the Event webpage couldn’t be associated with our research brand (Chair website, ASDMentalHealth Blog, or even York University). We would encourage on-going communication within your team and those involved so everyone is on the same page.

Looking for an appropriate venue, we kept in mind not only costs but accessibility for families – as well as technical requirements for our event (e.g. lighting, staging). With the depth and breadth of enthusiastic, passionate Canadian researchers, advocates and parents available, we had no difficulty finding individuals who could fit the TED requirements. Our speakers are up for the challenge, currently being coached to chiselling their passion, knowledge and experience into a tight 8 minutes. Similarly, finding partners and sponsors for the event was not a big challenge. Many organizations that shared the same vision of KT and gladly supported us, including the Faculty of Health at York University, NeuroDevNet, Kerry’s Place, Geneva Centre for Autism, Sinneave Family Foundation, and the Ontario Brain Institute.

We worked with an expert at York University who has successfully run TEDxYorkU over the last few years (Thanks Ross!), building on his success and his wisdom about what’s required in terms of advising speakers, creating an exciting schedule, space and technological issues. NeuroDevNet’s KT Core will be in attendance to engage with stakeholders and capture this engagement on video. Video taping of individual speakers is also being arranged through York University’s Learning Technology Services video team, who have had experience working with TEDxYorkU in the past and were familiar with TEDx guidelines.

Overall, familiarity with TEDx guidelines, building a team (e.g. with sponsors, speakers, technical support) and having consistent communication with those involved within is important to create a successful event. The exchange of ideas and having different perspectives (not just researchers) is, after all, the point of doing iKT!

For more information about this event, and how to register, please visit: http://www.tedxyorkusalon.org/ or contact Dr. Jonathan Weiss (jonweiss@yorku.ca) or Dr. Jonathan Lai (jonlai@yorku.ca) for details.

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_{[1] The Chair in Autism Spectrum Disorder Treatment and Care Research is funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research in partnership with Autism Speaks Canada, the Canadian Autism Spectrum Disorders Alliance, Health Canada, NeuroDevNet and the Sinneave Family Foundation. Additional support from York University and ORION’s O3 Collaboration.}

5 tips for writing the KT section of your research grant application

by Anneliese Poetz, KT Manager, NeuroDevNet

1. Don’t over-cite KT literature – cite some relevant KT literature, and describe one framework but choose one that makes sense for your research-to-impact goals. But resist the urge to over-cite the KT literature in place of describing your KT plan. Dazzling the funder with your knowledge about what frameworks are out there is not going to impress them. Instead, tell them what you are going to do to help maximize the chances that people will use your research findings.

2. Write your research proposal first – Some researchers try to write their KT plan in parallel with their research proposal. However, your KT plan depends on what you are going to do for your research. For example, the audiences you choose and the strategies you use to reach them depend on what your project is about and what you hope will happen with those findings. When you contact the KT Core for help, send us your full proposal, along with the link to the application requirements to ensure we have the information we need to provide you with the best service.

3. Budget appropriately for your KT activities – you can have a most impressive KT plan, but you also need to allocate an appropriate portion of your budget to be able to follow through. If you have no idea what certain activities may cost (or how much time they will take to do) contact the KT Core.

4. Think beyond dissemination – it is common for researchers to primarily think about publications and conference presentations as KT. While they are end-of-grant KT, they are not enough to impress a funder. Tell them about how you will engage with your stakeholders early on and throughout the project (integrated knowledge translation) and describe how you believe this will maximize the chances that your research will be taken up into practice, implemented, and eventually achieve impact.

5. Get creative – it is okay to propose to do KT activities that have been done before, such as producing clear language summaries, infographics and videos. But what else can you do that will make sense for your project? For example, can you hold a community event? Can you use an arts-based approach such as a play or a hands-on community workshop? Get creative! Brainstorm with your research team to think about how (and how many different ways) you can get the main messages of your research to your target audience(s).

If you would like help with the KT planning section of your research grant application, contact the KT Core to see how we can help.

Why use Survey Monkey for surveys when NeuroDevNet has REDCap? Create a REDCap survey in 10 easy steps

by Anneliese Poetz, KT Manager, NeuroDevNet

The KT Core provides services for evaluation mainly for KT events and KT products.  Did you know that REDCap can be used for collecting evaluation/survey data?  As a NeuroDevNet researcher or trainee, you have free access to REDCap using your login and password.  Use REDCap for informing your research and/or for KT evaluation purposes.

What kind of surveys would you want to use REDCap for?

• Data collection for research
• Evaluation of your KT event (either in-person or webinar)
• Evaluation of your KT product (summary, infographic, video, etc.)
• Needs assessment for informing capacity building, research grant applications, etc.
• Any survey you would normally use survey monkey, zoho, or any other free survey maker for

Example: I used REDCap recently to conduct a needs assessment for an upcoming workshop on evaluation of knowledge translation.  I used a mix of multiple choice and open-ended questions, and for one of the questions I used the “slider”.  I wanted to know how attendees rated their ability to do KT evaluation prior to the workshop, so by choosing the “slider” type of question I was able to give survey respondents the ability to slide a horizontal bar between “0” on one end and “100” on another end, sort of like a visual analog scale.  The data from these responses is represented as a scatter plot in the data report. It’s a neat feature I have never seen in any survey software before.  I customized a report of the open-ended text-based answers as well as a separate report that gave me either bar charts or pie charts showing the data from the multiple choice responses.  This was very useful data for informing our approach to the workshop.

What are the benefits of using REDCap for surveys?

• Has the same features as the paid-version of survey monkey
• Data is housed in Canada, by NeuroDevNet Neuroinformatics Core, not in the United States like Survey Monkey
• Can export your data into SPSS, SAS, R, MS Excel for analysis, or as a .csv file
• Can customize reports for data export so you can visually see trends (e.g. a bar or pie chart for multiple choice answers, text entries for open ended questions)
• Can enter email addresses of respondents directly into the survey, so you can track survey responses by user

How can you get started using REDCap?

1. Go to: https://neurodevnet.med.ualberta.ca/
2. Enter your NeuroDevNet username and password
3. Watch tutorial videos if needed, to learn how to use REDCap to develop your survey
4. Enter your questions, and design the survey using multiple choice options or open-ended text-based answers
5. Work with Neuroinformatics (Justin Leong, jleong [at] neurodevnet.ca) to finalize and launch your survey
6. Retrieve your data (using export/report options listed above)

Contact the KT Core if you’d like help drafting evaluation questions.  Here is a step-by-step example of how you can create your own survey in REDCap:

Step 1: Log into REDCap

Step 2: In this window, you will see surveys you have already created. You can click on an existing “Project Title” in the list, or to create a new survey click on the tab “Create New Project”.

Step 3: When you click on “Create New Project” tab, you will see the following screen. Type in a title for your survey, choose an appropriate “purpose” for your survey (I usually choose “Quality Improvement”) and I usually leave the default choice to start the project from scratch.  Then scroll to the bottom of the page and click the button “Create Project”.

Step 4: Set up your survey (project).  Click “enable” for “Use surveys in this project?” and then click on it to open a page that will allow you to upload a logo/photo and edit a message to your survey participants (such as ethics agreement if the survey is for research, an introduction/overview of the survey if you are doing a needs assessment or evaluation, information about how the data will be used etc.). When you are done, click the “I’m done!” button.  To design your survey, click the “Online Designer” button and “I’m done!”.

Step 5:  Design your survey.  You will see an entry under “Instrument Name” that is called “My First Instrument”.  Click on the “edit” button to edit the title of this instrument. If you don’t, and you create a new survey (if you “add new instrument”) you will have problems later that you will have to contact Justin to sort out.  After you are done editing the title to something more meaningful (can be the same title as your project title) click “save”.

Step 6: Click on the “Instrument name” title you just edited.  Click “Add Field” to add your first question to your survey.

Step 7: Design your survey questions.  Choose the type of field you want, for example, text box, multiple choice, true/false, slider (visual analog scale), etc.  The slider is great if you want to ask your survey respondents to rate something based on how they felt about it. It can give you more precise information than a scale from 1-10. For example, you can ask “how would you rate your knowledge about XYZ after this workshop?” and give them a scale from 1-100. Text boxes are good for open-ended questions, and multiple choice can be either “choose one only” or “choose multiple”.

Step 8: Create your questions. The example below shows how you would create a multiple choice question. Type the question you want to ask into “Field Label”. Type the choices for your multiple choice question in the box called “Choices” but don’t type a number, just type one choice per line. The numbers will be added automatically by REDCap.  Type in a meaningful name for the variable, so when you view the report of your data you’ll know which one it is.  I usually type “_text” at the end of answers that are open-ended text based answers so that I can create one report for the text-based answers, and another for the report-based answers.  Choose “yes” or “no” whether you want the question to be mandatory for the user to answer – the default is “no”.  Accept the defaults for everything else and click “save”.

This is what the question looks like:

Step 9: When you are done creating questions for your survey, click the “Project Setup” tab.  Click “I’m done!” for the “Design your data collection instruments” item.  Accept the default values and click “I’m done!” for the next 3 items “Enable optional modules and customizations”, “Set up project bookmarks” and “User Rights and Permissions”.  The next item asks you to test the instrument thoroughly before entering “Production” mode. Once you enter “Production” you will be limited in terms of what you can edit/change.

When you are done testing (and clicked “I’m done!”) click the button that says “Move project to production” to get the survey link that you can send to participants by copying/pasting the link into the body of an email.

Step 10: Get your survey link so you can send it in the body of an email to your participants (for anonymous survey data collection).  You may have to contact Justin for help with this.  If you want to try it on your own, look under the “Data Collection” heading on the left hand side of the project page, and click “Manage Survey Participants”.  Then you should be able to copy/paste the link for your survey into an email or into a tweet or other social media post.  Note: you have to have enabled the survey (step 4) in order to get the link for your survey.

This blog post is not exhaustive in terms of REDCap’s survey functionality.  You can also create custom reports so that as people fill out your survey, you can look at the data in a way that makes it easiest for you. For example, I usually create 2 reports: one for the text-based/open-ended answers and one for the multiple choice answers that are usually bar or pie-charts.  It’s up to you.

REDCap is a great tool for surveys.  You may have used it for research-based surveys, but you may not have thought about using it for conducting needs assessments before conducting a workshop, course or presentation or to assess your end-users’ needs before designing your KT products (summaries, infographics, videos, etc.) for evaluating an event (in-person workshop, stakeholder engagement event, or conference, or a webinar) or your KT products (survey your end-users to find out how they have used your KT Product, and what impact it may have had for informing practice or policy).

If you are a NeuroDevNet researcher or trainee and would like help with evaluation of your events and/or KT activities, contact the KT Core. If you need technical assistance setting up a REDCap survey, contact Justin Leong (jleong [at] neurodevnet.ca) from NeuroDevNet’s Neuroinformatics Core.

 

 

LinkedIn for knowledge translation: using groups for networking

By: Isaac Coplan (KT Coordinator)

Networking is important to knowledge translation (KT), as relationships are a key part of KT processes. This is where social media can be useful in KT. Websites like LinkedIn provide a platform in which to expand your network and meaningfully engage with stakeholders. If used properly, social media can be incorporated into Integrated KT strategies as well as end-of-grant research dissemination.

What is LinkedIn?

In the Social Media for KT resource (What is social media & where to start) I wrote about LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is known to cater to professional audiences. They are also well designed so that search engines (such as Google and Bing) privilege information on their pages. This means that they will frequently be higher up when someone runs a web-search on your name (this process is also called search engine optimization).

LinkedIn was designed with the idea of allowing a place for professionals to connect online. It works as a sort of online resume or CV and online presence that can be populated with links, articles and posts. LinkedIn is not just about seeking employment, it can be an important tool to connect with a wide range of stakeholders. In April 2014, LinkedIn announced that it reached 300 million registered users, up from 200 million in 2013.

LinkedIn Groups

One thing that I should also mention is the power of LinkedIn groups to expand your professional network. In LinkedIn groups, people frequently post questions or scenarios to their group, this allows for a conversation to occur naturally.Research Impact used their LinkedIn group to pose questions to KT practitioners in order to differentiate between knowledge translation and communications.  Analysis from the responses to this question on LinkedIn led to a research paper.

Groups can easily be searched (this Boolean search Tip sheet from LinkedIn is helpful). This provides you with access to over 1.5 Million groups. The search feature easily shows you if any of your existing connections are in groups and the relative popularity. This can allow you to quickly determine the groups that are already relevant to your networks.

How can expanding your LinkedIn network help you with your KT?
There are several benefits of networking that include:

• Gaining greater visibility in professional circles
• Being able to contribute to online conversations in your field
• Providing another place for audiences to discover and contact you

In addition, expanding your research teams’ networks can become a rich source for getting feedback on your work. Two ways that this can be achieved are through:

1. Gathering feedback from stakeholders to inform your research questions and approach
2. Evaluating the work you have already completed.

Instead of creating a LinkedIn group that we would have to recruit members for, the KT Core expands our networks (connections to our profile page) by targeting policymakers, practitioners and other researchers that may find NeuroDevNet’s research useful in their work and sending them an invitation to connect.

LinkedIn can also be a part of a strategy to evaluate KT Products. For the evaluation of ResearchSnapshots, the KT Core sent personal messages to selected members of our LinkedIn network.  We asked the same questions of stakeholders in: Cerebral Palsy, Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, and Autism Spectrum disorder and included a link to the ResearchSnapshots on our website for each of these major projects.  We wanted to answer questions like:

• Do you find the snapshot a) interesting, b) useful, c) both useful and interesting? D) Neither useful nor interesting?
• How have/would you use these ResearchSnapshot(s)?
• If you would not use these ResearchSnapshot(s), why?

This provided the KT Core with valuable insight into the ways that different products are used, or could be used by different knowledge users.

If you are a NeuroDevNet researcher or trainee we can help you learn how to use LinkedIn for KT, or help you advance your existing social media strategy, contact the KT Core!

What is a Twitter chat? How can I facilitate one?

by Isaac Coplan (KT Coordinator)

A Twitter chat is a live chat event on twitter. It is organized using a unique hashtag that can then be tracked to understand the level of participation. A facilitator asks a series of questions (usually 6) during a pre-scheduled time period (usually lasting an hour). This allows participants to either follow along, or read a transcript at a later date.

“Imagine a business networking event—but without a dress code and with a keyboard instead of a bar. The same social customs apply—courtesy and respect—and it’s a great way to meet new people with similar interests. There are Twitter chats in almost every industry imaginable.” –Nicole Miller of BufferApp (Twitter Chat 101).

Benefits of using a Twitter chat:

• Introduces real time interaction between stakeholders and researchers, service providers and/or policy makers
• Connects people with similar interests online, growing your social network
• Provides a platform for communication that can be saved, measured, and referred to in the future
•  Allows people to participate from across the country
• Can work well as one part of an integrated KT strategy by focusing on engagement, feedback and dissemination to a wide audience at a relatively low cost

On November 18, 2014, we worked with CanChild to host a Twitter chat leading up to their family engagement day. Here is the process that we used, organized by approximate time periods.

A successful Twitter chat can be organized over a few weeks.

Three weeks before:

• Choose an original Hashtag: This can be done by searching on Twitter. Try and keep the hashtag as short as possible, without using one that is already in use. Try searching the hashtag on Google first, to make sure that there aren’t any other connotations to the abbreviation.
• Determine a way to collect metrics: Symplur.com allows for a free service that can provide detailed metrics for Twitter chat related to health. However, registration can take a number of weeks; register at least 2-3 weeks in advance.

Two Weeks Before:

• Write questions: Typically Twitter chats last for approximately One hour with a question every 10 minutes. Key participants can be provided with the questions in advance, however typically they are not made public until the event.
• Select Facilitator: The role of the facilitator is to keep the chat moving, and to make sure that questions are being answered in the correct format (this makes it easier for people who want to follow along on the transcript afterwards).
• Choose platform for Twitter chat: tchat.io is one that the KT Core have used in the past. Platforms automatically type in the designated hashtag, and focus only on content related to the chat. There are several other examples – and participants may opt to follow along on Twitter.
• Begin publicizing the Twitter chat through social networks. This should include a brief description of the topic, the hashtag, the time and date.

At the event:

• The Facilitator welcomes participants, and asks them to introduce themselves. This allows others to have a good understanding of who’s involved in the event. The facilitator keeps the conversation on track by asking questions in a timely manner.
• Questions should be asked using the following format:

• While Answers are formatted in the following way:

Facilitators can remind, or inform, participants of the format. This makes it easier for people to follow along by reading the transcript in the future.

After the Event:

The facilitator can create a transcript using Symplur or another platform. In addition, it is also possible to gather metrics that include impressions, participant and reach. You can easily see how many people participated and how many people viewed tweets related to the Twitter chat.

What did the metrics tell us?

In the CanChild Twitter chat there were 41 Participants from across Canada. The posts were viewed 109,351 times (Impressions). Throughout the day of the chat, 344 Tweets Sent. – 268 of those sent during the 1 hour chat.

Twitter chats have the opportunity to quickly engage a large number of people on a specific content matter, and can increase engagement with individuals, organizations or researchers who may otherwise not be able to attend.

Follow NeuroDevNet’s  KT Core on Twitter: @NeuroDevNetKT

Follow NeuroDevNet on Twitter: @NeuroDevNet

See a transcript of the Twitter chat Hosted by NeuroDevNetKT and CanChild:  #CanChildKT

For more information on how to hose a Twitter chat see:

Steve Cooper’s (Forbes) Ultimate Guide to hosting a Tweet chat

Nicole Miller’s (BufferApp) Twitter Chats 101

For more understanding of how this fits in with a family engagement strategy see “What are some of the ways Neurodevnet is supporting family engagement.”
If you are a NeuroDevNet researcher or trainee, or if you represent one of Canada’s NCEs and would like to know more about NeuroDevNet’s KT Core services please visit our website and/or contact the KT Core.

What is Social Media & Where to Start?

Blog post by:  Isaac Coplan, @neurodevnetkt

The KT Core has produced a new resource for NeuroDevNet researchers and trainees, referred to as the social media “guide of guides”. It is the newest addition to our collection of KT Tools that we feature on the NeuroDevNet Website. It is an annotated bibliography of the best and most applicable published guides for researchers to “do KT” for their research.

Starting to use social media for Knowledge Translation can be overwhelming, especially for busy researchers who are not familiar with social media and who might not see the value of it for dissemination and stakeholder engagement. Indeed, a simple Google search will result in a large number of articles, blogs and websites that promise to direct you on how to start. Many of them charge money for unnecessary programs or services related to social media– and few are directly related to KT. Before I began my position as KT Coordinator with NeuroDevNet, Krista Jensen (of the York University Knowledge Mobilization Unit) and Elle Seymour (former KT Coordinator, NeuroDevNet) had conducted a search and narrowed them down to the top guides. I was happy to help finalize the guide and organized them from guides targeted at the beginner level to more advanced levels.

Our “guide of guides” begins with a section that explains the value of social media for researchers, for KT purposes and organizes the guides reviewed into several other sections:

Why use social media?

Planning & Strategic Social Media Guides

Advanced resources, metrics and tools for measuring social media reach           

While social media is certainly transforming the way that information is viewed, communicated and shared it isn’t necessarily making these processes simple. Social media requires planning – and for more complex strategies, can require designated staff. If you are beginning to use social media – you may be curious about how it has helped researchers with KT. The first section “Why use social media?” provides links and useful annotations to a variety of resources. This can provide you with initial push to start thinking about social media and answer some of your questions about why researchers use different platforms. Another example of how this guide may be used, is if there is a researcher who connects with people online, but hasn’t started thinking about social media strategically. The “Planning & Strategic Social Media Guides” section has resources that will help you move from a casual social media user – to a more strategic user. The final section “Advanced resources, metrics and tools for measuring social media reach” looks at tools that can provide you with more advanced thinking on social media. The guides in this section cover topics such as tracking research, reach of your social media channels and  data visualization.

Overall- there are many advantages to social media use by researchers – one of the overarching benefits is the number of people that are now using social media regularly, which means the number of stakeholders that can be reached in this way by researchers is also greater. These stakeholders include: researchers from institutions around the world, mainstream media, research networks, non-profit organizations, community organizations, health care institutions, government offices and education institutions from most of the world to name a few.

This guide is a good reference for researchers and trainees who want to start using social media for KT. If you are a researcher/trainee and already using social media, you can use the more advanced guides referenced in this “guide of guides” in order to approach social media more strategically. Social media doesn’t have to be mystical – these guides can help you.

If you are a NeuroDevNet researcher or trainee we can help you learn how to use social media for KT, or help you advance your existing strategy, contact the KT Core!