A quality assessment framework for transdisciplinary research design, monitoring, and evaluation: Guidance for...

Appropriate definitions and measures of quality are needed to guide research design and evaluation. Traditional disciplinary research approaches have well-established evaluation criteria and processes in which research quality is often narrowly defined. In contrast, emerging change-oriented transdisciplinary research (TDR) approaches integrate disciplines and include societal actors in the research process in multiple ways and contexts. Standard research assessment criteria are simply inadequate for TDR, and inappropriate use of standard criteria may disadvantage TDR proposals and impede the development of TDR. This paper presents a Quality Assessment Framework (QAF) designed for TDR, along with guidance for its application. The background outlines the origin of the framework in a systematic review of literature on the definition and assessment of transdisciplinary research quality, and the subsequent application, testing and refinement of the framework, including discussion of key revisions. It also compares the QAF with two other similar evaluation frameworks. The QAF is designed for a range of users, including: research funders and research managers assessing proposals; researchers designing, planning, and monitoring a research project; and research evaluators assessing projects ex-post. The framework is organized as:•Four principles of TDR quality•Specific criteria aligned with each principle•Standardized four-point scoring.