To Örebro University

Background: Involving members of the public in the development and evaluation of interventions is now widely recognised as important. Such involvement helps ensure that interventions meet the needs of target populations, optimise research processes (e.g. recruitment, data collection), and shape how findings are shared. A range of terms are used to describe this work, including public involvement, public engagement, community involvement, and coproduction. In this presentation we share findings from a literature review examining the extent to which studies of the development and evaluation of family-based prevention intervention have included public involvement. The review explored: 1) the scope and aims of public involvement within published studies; 2) the nomenclature used to describe public involvement; 3) use of frameworks or guidance; and 4) reported outcomes of involvement.

Methods: A protocol and search strategy were devised to guide a systematic search of relevant published articles, covering the period from 2019 onwards. Multiple databases were searched for relevant articles, including Scopus and MEDLINE. A data extraction tool was used to summarise data on public involvement in each included paper, as well as the proportion of studies which included any form of public involvement. Findings were synthesised to examine how public involvement was used, its aims, and its reported outcomes.

Results: The presentation summarises final results from this study. Emerging findings indicate that public involvement in the development and evaluation of family-based prevention interventions is often limited, and that there is significant variation in the extent to which it is reported by researchers.

Discussion: We highlight key opportunities for strengthening public involvement in Prevention Science, including methodological guidance, reporting practices in publications, and building researcher capacity.