Frameworks to Evaluate the Quality of Public Involvement in Health and Social Care Research: A Scoping Review

Public involvement (PI) in health and social care research is well established. However, questions remain about the quality of PI activities and the consistency with which high-quality PI is conceptualised. This lack of clarity in how PI quality should be defined and assessed creates challenges for identifying and promoting best practice. While many tools and guidelines exist to support researchers to involve public contributors, it is unclear how many specifically address the evaluation of quality. This scoping review aimed to identify and compare existing frameworks developed to assess the quality of PI in health and social care research.

A scoping review was conducted in line with the Arksey and O'Malley framework. Nine electronic databases were searched for articles published from 2000 onwards. In addition, Google and the websites of large health and social care charities and research councils were searched to identify unpublished (grey) literature. Forward and backward citation tracking was used to identify sources describing the development of evaluation frameworks to ensure sufficient information on the frameworks was available.

From the search, we identified six frameworks designed to evaluate the quality of PI in health and social care research. These were: CUBE, INSIGHT, PiiAF (Public Involvement Impact Assessment Framework), PEQG (Patient Engagement Quality Guidance tool), QIF (Quality Involvement Framework), and PIRIT (Public Involvement in Research Impact Toolkit). While all the frameworks share a common goal to promote best practice in PI, they differ in their conceptualisations of quality, approaches to evaluation, and intended role in the research cycle.

This review provides the first comparative analysis of evaluation frameworks focused on PI quality and offers practical guidance for framework selection. Several evaluation frameworks are available for researchers and public contributors to assess the quality of involvement activities. Because the frameworks identified varied in their conceptualisation of quality and approaches to evaluation, research teams must consider which framework is most aligned with their evaluation goals.

A public contributor was involved in the preparation and review of the manuscript, approved the final version, and is included as a co-author. Their contribution included a retrospective review of the study design, inclusion and exclusion criteria, and interpretation of the findings. Due to the absence of funding at the outset of the project, public contributors were not involved in the initial study design or scoping review.