Building and Sustaining a URE Methods Repository

With this grant, Gitomer will create a repository of methodological protocols for use in empirical studies of the use of research evidence (URE). The repository is intended to serve as an open access public platform housing high-quality research protocols, measures, and coding schemes for adaptation and use by other researchers and funders. Following the early-stage development of the repository, the team is ready to build out the full repository, develop supports for its use, and open it to a broad user base. With this award, they will develop methodological templates and a tagging infrastructure for all remaining methods (e.g., social network analysis, interviews, observations, etc.) employed in Foundation-supported studies of URE. The team will also build accessible and transparent supports (e.g., text documents, videos, and slideshows) to facilitate use of the repository, as well as develop resources and plug-ins that allow other researchers to contribute their tools to the platform. To facilitate the repository’s sustainable growth, Gitomer and colleagues will develop quality control strategies to ensure that high-quality protocols are prominently displayed on the site and can serve as models for researchers who are new to the field. Finally, they will recruit additional exemplar projects from the URE field to expand the range of high-quality protocols and implement a review process that enables experts to comment on others’ methods.