Development of a Reporting Guideline for Trochim's Concept Mapping

Reporting guidelines are created with the intention to enhance the quality and transparency of reporting different research methods. Trochim's concept mapping (often referred to as group concept mapping) is a six-phase, participatory mixed-method approach to understanding complex constructs. Currently, there is no reporting guideline for concept mapping. Developing a reporting guideline typically follows a three-step process: 1. a systematic review to establish the need for a reporting guideline, 2. a Delphi study to identify candidate items, and 3. consolidation process to inform a draft guideline. We have previously reported our step 1, a systematic review of health-related concept mapping studies. In this paper, we report on steps 2 and 3, guideline development. In developing our reporting guideline, we opted to use concept mapping rather than the Delphi method. Stakeholders including researchers and experts in concept mapping were identified from papers included in our systematic review and invited to participate. Thirty-two stakeholders participated in the brainstorming phase of the concept mapping generating 96 discrete statements. The prioritisation and clustering phase involved 24 stakeholders. The final concept map included 11 clusters that represented key concepts for inclusion in the reporting guideline. The clusters were relatively small and positioned in a circle around the edge of the map, suggesting each was of equal importance and conceptually discreet. In phase 3, a guideline was drafted using the findings from both the phase 1 systematic review and phase 2 concept mapping study. The draft was reviewed by eight stakeholders (who had participated in our phase 2 concept mapping study) to check the completeness and clarity of expression of the items included in the guideline. The final reporting guideline (called the ConMapT) has 27-items organised under 14 headings. The guideline will be made freely available via the EQUATOR network. Registration: The study protocol was registered with the Open Science Framework (OSF) before recruiting the first study participant. The EQUATOR network has listed the study as a guideline under development.