Exploring Patient and Caregiver Perceptions of the Facilitators and Barriers to Patient Engagement in Research: Participatory Qualitative Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Patient engagement in research is the meaningful and active involvement of patient/caregiver partners (i.e., patients and their family/friends) in research priority-setting, conduct, and governance. With the proper support, patient/caregiver partners can inform every stage of the research cycle, but common barriers often prevent their full engagement. OBJECTIVE: This participatory qualitative study answered the question: What are the facilitators and barriers to patient engagement experienced by patient/caregiver partners in a Canadian research context? METHODS: Participants were N = 13 patient/caregiver partners (Mage = 62 years, 85% women; 100% White) from four provinces who completed 60-90-minute semi-structured online interviews. The interviews were transcribed verbatim. One researcher and one patient/caregiver partner reviewed the transcripts and curated a dataset of 90 participant quotations representing facilitators and barriers to patient engagement. This dataset was co-analyzed using Participatory Theme Elicitation alongside seven patient/caregiver partners with diverse identities who were not among the participants we interviewed and, therefore, contributed novel perspectives. RESULTS: Four themes depicted factors that facilitate meaningful patient engagement alongside barriers that arise when these factors are not in place: (1) Co-defining roles and expectations, (2) Demonstrating the value and impact of engagement, (3) Psychological safety, and (4) Educating the public, patient/caregiver partners, and researchers. We then discuss how barriers to enacting these four factors can be mitigated and provide a practical checklist of considerations for both researchers and patient/caregiver partners for engaging together throughout the research cycle. CONCLUSIONS: Researchers and patient/caregiver partners should draw from our findings to mitigate engagement barriers and facilitate meaningful engagement experiences.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.060 | 0.061 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.015 | 0.013 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.009 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".