Does research through Structured Operational Research and Training (SORT IT) courses impact policy and practice?

Structured Operational Research and Training Initiative (SORT IT) courses are well known for their output, with nearly 90% of participants completing the course and publishing in scientific journals.

We assessed the impact of research papers on policy and practice that resulted from six SORT IT courses initiated between July 2012 and March 2013.

This was a cross-sectional study involving e-mail-based, self-administered questionnaires and telephone/skype/in-person responses from first and/or senior co-authors of course papers. A descriptive content analysis of the responses was performed and categorised into themes.

Of 72 participants, 63 (88%) completed the course. Course output included 81 submitted papers, of which 76 (94%) were published. Of the 81 papers assessed, 45 (55%) contributed to a change in policy and/or practice: 29 contributed to government policy/practice change (20 at national, 4 at subnational and 5 at hospital level), 11 to non-government organisational policy change and 5 to reinforcing existing policy. The changes ranged from modifications of monitoring and evaluation tools, to redrafting of national guidelines, to scaling up existing policies.

More than half of the SORT IT course papers contributed to a change in policy and/or practice. Future assessments should include more robust and independent verification of the reported change(s) with all stakeholders.