Common criteria for evaluating cross-disciplinary research in global health: a scoping review

Solutions to global health challenges depend on nations' capacity for cross-disciplinary research in global health. Despite longstanding demands for practical guidelines, published guidance and frameworks for evaluating cross-disciplinary research are scarce and scattered among disciplines. We aimed to bring together information on how cross-disciplinary research has been evaluated and collate the frameworks and tools that have been used to advance knowledge and practice about the design and evaluation of cross-disciplinary research in global health.

We conducted a systematic scoping review by searching five databases (MEDLINE, CINAHL COMPLETE, Global Health, PubMed, Web of Science) for publications relevant for our objectives. These were to understand the characteristics of frameworks used to evaluate cross-disciplinary research, to describe how they had been used in practice, and to identify underlying common underpinning criteria. Our inclusion criteria were that the publications (a) focus on frameworks for cross-disciplinary research and (b) include aspects of evaluation or monitoring. The last search was conducted in July 2023.

Thirty-one of 2718 screened publications met our inclusion criteria. The intended users of the frameworks were cross-disciplinary researchers (31; 97%), funders (15; 48%), evaluators/reviewers (15; 48%) and practitioners/stakeholders (10; 32%). Eight frameworks (26%) were bespoke for a particular project and used a 'context-process-outcome' approach to incorporate the whole research pathway. Four frameworks (13%) focused on evaluating outcome/impact. Nineteen (61%) focused on other specific aspects of cross-disciplinary research. Seventeen frameworks (55%) provided evaluation tools and 14 (45%) included guidance about their use in practice. Twenty-four (77%) provided examples of how their frameworks were used in practice, and 21 (68%) stated that their frameworks were generalizable in different contexts. The criteria used for the evaluations across the publications fell into four categories: appropriate cross-disciplinary research approaches for the project goal; shared learning and integration; meeting disciplinary standards; and effective synthesis.

Our collation and description of the heterogenous published guidance and frameworks for evaluating cross-disciplinary research, and our practical lessons for how to improve the robustness of such evaluations, will help funders, researchers and evaluators to make evidence-informed choices when they commission, design and evaluate cross-disciplinary research programmes in global health.