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Record W4417225709 · doi:10.1186/s40900-025-00796-y

Recognition, remuneration and reimbursement of patient and public involvement partners in pragmatic randomised controlled trials. A survey of author practices

2025· article· en· W4417225709 on OpenAlexafffund
Stuart G. Nicholls, Pascale Nevins, Grace Fox, Shelley Vanderhout, Jamie Brehaut, Kelly Carroll, Dean Fergusson, Alicia Hilderley, Colin Macarthur, Beth K. Potter, Maureen Smith, Anne Spinewine, Charles Weijer, Monica Taljaard

Bibliographic record

VenueResearch Involvement and Engagement · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldHealth Professions
TopicMental Health and Patient Involvement
Canadian institutionsInstitute for Clinical Evaluative SciencesTrillium Health CentreWestern UniversityUniversity of TorontoUniversity of OttawaCommunications Research Centre CanadaOttawa Hospital
FundersSchool of Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel HillCanadian Institutes of Health ResearchUniversité François-RabelaisBrown UniversityUniversity of AberdeenEli Lilly and Company
KeywordsPublic involvementReimbursementPsychological interventionRemunerationClinical trialPatient participationAlternative medicineQualitative research

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

BACKGROUND: Patient and public involvement (PPI) in the design and conduct of clinical trials has been increasingly encouraged by funders as an essential ingredient in the conduct of research. Recognition of PPI partners through acknowledgement or authorship, and financial supports, including remuneration and reimbursement, may facilitate involvement. However, little empirical data exists regarding current practices of recognising, remunerating and reimbursing PPI partners for their contributions to research. AIMS: To describe the extent to which patient and public partners are recognised and remunerated for their involvement in a cohort of pragmatic randomised controlled trials (RCTs). METHODS: Cross sectional survey of corresponding authors of pragmatic RCTs published between January 1, 2014, and April 3, 2019. RESULTS: From 2585 delivered invitations, 710 responded, with 334 (47%) indicating that they had involved PPI partners within the trial. Among 300 respondents to questions about authorship, 59 (20%) reported PPI partners were included as named authors and 19 (6%) that PPI partners were included as part of a group authorship. Of 300 respondents to questions regarding remuneration, 132 (44%) indicated that PPI partners were provided some form of remuneration. Of the 303 respondents to questions about reimbursement, 186 (61%), indicated that PPI partners were reimbursed for expenses incurred. Of 274 respondents who completed all three questions regarding reimbursement, remuneration, and authorship or acknowledgment, 83 (30%) indicated that all three were provided to PPI partners, while 40 (15%) indicated that they provided none of the options. CONCLUSION: A fifth of researchers reported including PPI partners as named co-authors, less than half provided remuneration, and over a third did not reimburse partners. There is a need to better understand the nature of any barriers that research teams and PPI partners face regarding recognition, reimbursement, and remuneration, and to develop targeted interventions that will address these barriers. Patient and public involvement (PPI) in the design and conduct of clinical trials is encouraged or required in many cases. It is important to recognise PPI partners for their time and insight. Despite many guidelines being produced, we actually know very little about how researchers recognise and financially support PPI partners. To address this gap, we surveyed the authors of published clinical trials about their practices. Specifically, we asked researchers whether they had acknowledged their PPI partners or included them as co-authors, provided financial support for their time, or had covered expenses. From 2585 delivered invitations, a total of 710 researchers responded. Almost half (334/710, 47%) said they had involved PPI partners in their trial. A fifth of these researchers (59/300, 20%) reported that they included PPI partners as named co-authors. Just under half (132/300, 44%) reported that they had provided financial support for the time of their PPI partner. Almost two thirds (186/303, 61%) did cover expenses. Of those who completed all three questions almost a third (83/274, 30%) reported that all three options were provided to PPI partners. However, 40 (40/274, 15%) reported that they provided none of the options.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame distilled prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.080
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.011
Version: codex-gemma-dda1882f352aValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesMetaresearch
Consensus categoriesMetaresearch
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Observational · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.616
Threshold uncertainty score0.998

Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0800.011
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0010.000
Bibliometrics0.0010.001
Science and technology studies0.0010.000
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0000.000
Research integrity0.0000.001
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0000.000

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.

Opus teacher head0.661
GPT teacher head0.565
Teacher spread0.096 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; both teacher heads agree on what is shown here.

Study designObservational
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

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".

Quick stats

Citations1
Published2025
Admission routes2
Has abstractyes

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