The Priority Setting Program builds upon previous experiences with involving citizens, patients and stakeholders in actively shaping research priorities at the Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft. This highly innovative approach has led to the establishment of five Open Innovation in Science research units using elements of priority setting in certain steps of their founding procedures (Research Group Village, Research Group D.O.T., LBI Digital Health Patient Safety, LBI Digital Health & Prevention, Research Group Senescence and Healing of Wounds).

Since the first “Tell us” crowdsourcing projects successfully experimented with shaping research questions by experts by experience using crowd wisdom, different priority setting methods have already been applied, like sand pit approaches to collaboratively form project proposals (Ideas Lab) and applying lead user/experts workshop series to refine research questions.

The Priority Setting Program is an integral part of the LBG OIS Center. We aim to establish a central hub within the Austrian research landscape, for prioritizing research by meaningfully involving citizens, patients and stakeholders.

priority setting program

The program supports researchers in collaboratively working together with stakeholders to identify open research questions or under-researched research topics, to prioritize them according to their importance and, in a final step, to reach consensus on the research questions, topics or areas that researchers should devote themselves to as a priority.

To that end, the program provides consulting, coaching and mentoring along the questions: What needs to be prioritized? How must the prioritization process be designed and implemented? How can priorities be sustainably integrated into the research landscape?

Why priority Setting?

Collaboratively setting research priorities with stakeholders helps detecting blind spots in science for which critical evidence is yet missing and helps to use scarce resources (money, time, workforce) effectively both in order to generate the greatest possible impact. By co-creating a joint research agenda, collective responsibility is established and research and science are ultimately brought closer together.

RESOURCES

The Priority Setting Project Database

Our priority setting project database offers a comprehensive overview of research priority setting projects worldwide. The project descriptions provide particular insights into the setup, methodologies and stakeholders involved. Any priority setting exercises that elicited the research priorities of stakeholders (i.e.: patients/consumers, healthcare professionals, policy-makers, funders) and for which an English process description exists are included in the database.

The database serves both as a source of inspiration for future priority setting projects and as a research tool for unanswered research questions and under-researched topics.

The database is constantly updated with new projects. In case, you are missing a priority setting project, please share it with us!

Involving Stakeholders in Research Priority Setting

In our scoping review "Involving Stakeholders in Research Priority Setting" we aim to map out stakeholder involvement in research priority setting exercises worldwide. To that end, the review will describe, synthesize and evaluate any research priority setting exercises with a particular focus on how stakeholder involvement has been designed and implemented. The review questions therefore touch three broad areas of interest: (1) the basic setup of these exercises, (2) the design of stakeholder involvement, and (3) the implementation of stakeholder involvement.

Involving Stakeholders in Research Priority Setting: A Scoping Review Protocol

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