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Table 3 Comparison of researchers’ and participants’ evaluations

From: Research dissemination workshops: observations and implications based on an experience in Burkina Faso

Researchers

Participants

Content

- Order of presentations logical, but some repetitions

- Presentations conveying key message (e.g. lack of integration of anti-malaria interventions, community health workers (CHWs) not much used in urban settings, re-emergence of malaria in certain points of concentration identified each year, etc.)

- Results seen as credible, good quality of studies

- Presentations by international researchers seen as sensitive to conditions in the field and adapted to the context

- Scientific process too detailed for the non-initiated, but appreciated by those with research experience

Accessibility

- Language used by researchers not always comprehensible to everyone

- Anthropological content perceived as being accessible and interesting for participants

- Geographic content on prevalence zones too complex and not presented in sufficiently simplified language

- Language comprehensible for actors in the health system

- Language too specialised for public administration actors and local health workers

- Presentations on prevalence zones too complex to understand

Group membership

- Desire to have partners with decision-making power in attendance (regional and district-level decision-makers, anti-malaria program heads)

- Adapting presentations challenging due to the diversity of actors in attendance (public administrators, nurses working in the field)

- Diversity of actors in attendance appreciated (researchers, non-governmental organisations, practitioners)

- Absence of decision-makers from the central level perceived as a limitation

- Concern that no CHWs attended the workshop

Interactivity

- Discussions seen as helpful in delineating the problems

- Hesitation by participants from the field to express themselves due to presence of decision-makers (public administration, anti-malaria program heads)

- Hierarchical relationships potentially inhibiting any challenging of results presented

- Friendly environment that encouraged feedback from participants

- Participants self-conscious and hesitant at first, but still able to present their views

- Space created in which everyone’s (nurses, physicians, practitioners) concerns and opinions could be shared

Recommendations

- Difficult to formulate recommendations geared toward specific actors

- Perceived lack of receptivity and interest with regard to some proposed recommendations

- Recommendations and proposed solutions to problems both seen as being clear

- Lack of concrete discussion on actions to be taken going forward

  1. Source: Individual interviews with workshop participants and researchers (n = 11)