Approaches and tools to measure individual-level research experience, activities, and outcomes: A narrative review

Strengthening the research workforce is essential for meeting the evolving needs and challenges in the health and biomedical fields. To do so effectively, it requires an understanding of how the experiences of a researcher shift over time and how one's research career evolves, particularly as supports are put in place to foster research. This narrative review provides a summary of published individual-level assessment measures and survey tools from 2000-2024. All measures were abstracted, classified, and coded during analyses to describe the areas of focus, and they were organized into one of six research categories. The review identified a range of measures and methods across all categories. However, the measures were often narrow, focused on outputs, and not ideal for assessing the full range of experiences a researcher may have throughout their career. The most common metrics were related to research productivity and bibliometric measures. Our review of survey tools revealed a gap in comprehensive approaches available to assess an individual's research experience, efforts, supports, and impact. As efforts expand to evaluate and study the research workforce, tools that focus on a broad range of individual-level measures, tied to specific underlying constructs and drawn from the literature, may prove useful.