Fig. 2

Unpacking research funders’ implementation knowledge. The grounded model emerged from the empirical findings and from relating the empirical findings to existing literature. The grounded model provides a conceptual framework for explaining research funders’ implementation knowledge. Clinical experience, clinical research experience and task relevance were clearly connected to self-assessment of implementation knowledge, which are indicated by bold arrows. Several factors were not clearly connected to self-assessment of implementation knowledge, namely industry experience, knowledge of implementation research and general research experience, which are indicated by dashed arrows. No connection was found between implementation definitions and self-assessment of implementation knowledge