Table 1 Different degrees of cross-disciplinary integration in health policy and systems research
Domain | Low | Cross-disciplinarity Medium | High |
|---|---|---|---|
MDHPSR | IDHPSR | TDHPSR | |
Context | •Applicable to health problems beyond the scope of traditional approaches [13, 19, 20, 23, 57, 70] •Disparate and discipline-specific research questions and goals [19, 20, 57] •Conceived in silos but towards a common problem [13, 23, 57, 70, 75] | •Applicable to health problems beyond the scope of traditional approaches [19, 22, 55,56,57, 64, 69, 70, 74] •Shared/mutually agreed-upon research questions and goals with interdisciplinary representation [19, 22, 57, 69] •Conceived based on synergy of perspectives from different disciplines [22, 29, 55,56,57, 64, 70, 74, 75] | •Applicable to health problems beyond the scope of traditional approaches [20, 59, 67, 70] • Shared/mutually agreed-upon research questions and goals that transcend disciplinary bases [20, 59, 67] •Conceived based on continuous learning and actionable insights beyond disciplinary boundaries [20, 67, 70] |
Mechanism | •Integration means combining findings of individual studies conducted from different disciplinary insights [13, 21, 23, 70, 75] •Disparate intra-disciplinary investigators or teams working from their specific disciplinary perspectives [20, 21, 23] •Separate/parallel intra-disciplinary theoretical and methodological frameworks [20, 23, 73] | •Integration means collaboration between disciplines [22, 55, 56, 64, 73, 76] •Relatively basic scientific team [22, 56, 73] •Co-design, co-investigation and co-creation limited to participating disciplines [22, 57, 74] •Philosophy of transient and intermittent conceptual, theoretical and methodological integration [55, 75] •Focuses on explicit exchange of perspectives, concepts and methods [68, 74], reciprocal discipline-specific action [54, 60] | •Integration traverse stakeholder, disciplinary, organisational and professional boundaries [20, 53, 59, 67] •Formative scientific team [20, 52, 77] •Co-design, co-investigation and co-creation over disciplinary limits [20, 52, 67, 74] •Philosophy of flexibility and ongoing integration in response to new information about the problem [20, 28, 74] •Reflects robust systematic interplay between research stakeholders (academic and non-academic) and elements (design, data collection and analysis) of the research [20, 76, 78] |
Outcome | •More basic than action-oriented output [13, 75, 79] •Output is the sum of individual evaluations [21, 23, 70] •Diverse perspectives to the topic being studied [13, 21, 23, 54] | •More comprehensive outcomes than individual parts [22, 55,56,57, 64, 69] •Middle-range output effectiveness and impact on problem [52, 67, 73, 75] | •Grand-scale outcome, more comprehensive and impactful [52, 67, 71, 73] •User-centred, action-oriented output [76, 77, 80] |