Systematic Review of Quantitative Measures of Stakeholder Engagement

Stakeholder engagement in research has received increasing attention in recent years.1,2 The term “stakeholder engagement” refers to the process of meaningful involvement of those who are engaged in making decisions about programs.3 Engaging members of the target population is often key to improving the relevance of the issues studied, the procedures used for study, and the interpretation of outcomes of research studies, health promotion activities, and disease prevention initiatives.4–6 The utility of stakeholder engagement has beenwell established in the literature,7–9 but there are few examples ofmeasurement and evaluation of the degree to which stakeholders are engaged in these activities and the impact of engagement on positive outcomes. These types of evaluations have been limited in scope, and largely focused on qualitative approaches.10–14 Qualitative methods cannot be easily compared across programs or institutions.15 Necessary reliability and validity information describing selfreported levels of stakeholder engagement are also lacking, and is essential to identifying the impact of engagement on the scientific process and scientific discovery.