Over our years of conducting and completing consulting contracts, the Improve Group recognized a pattern that led to enormous project success. This discovery was that in each of the projects where we had invested a significant amount of time in the beginning stages to learn about systems, data, and the people we would be working with, we were able to ultimately identify deeper insights and help organizations understand issues more thoroughly.
Large, complex studies involving multiple agencies, populations and data sources can build on this lesson with a Scoping Study. Beginning research projects with a scoping study benefits both client and the consultant. The scoping study allows us to work closely with our clients to become more acquainted with the subject, potential barriers in data collection, and how the findings will contribute to the broader knowledge base.
The following Scoping Study activities identify and develop an agreed upon roadmap to follow throughout the project work:
- Identify data collection opportunities & barriers. Collaboratively, the researcher and client explore the available data to understand its quality, any gaps in the data, and what questions can be answered with existing data. They then work to understand the study stakeholders and ways of engaging them in research. For example, program participants may be an important source of new information, but may be reluctant to complete surveys. By fully exploring these issues, the researcher can begin to develop an approach that will draw on opportunities and overcome barriers.
- Develop the data collection plan. The data collection plan addresses: who the key informants are, what strategies will be used to gather data from them, how many respondents are necessary, how incentives, consent, and anonymity will be addressed, and how questions should be worded to be appropriate to each population. It might also address modifications to data collection protocols to meet the needs of different populations (such as simplified questions for younger respondents).
- Finalize the workplan. This scoping study concludes with a comprehensive scope of work for the client, with a timeline, monthly (or weekly) activities, and expected deliverables. Often, it also includes roles and responsibilities, such as how review and acceptance of deliverables will happen.
The Improve Group wanted all of our clients to experience the benefits of a scoping study even when the project was less complex. We developed an Inception Phase that is now incorporated into all of our projects. This gives our team, and our clients, the chance to fully articulate what will happen in the evaluation before diving in to data collection or analysis. Over the course of a few weeks, we:
- Learn about the organization, how they hope to use the results of our work, who they will be sharing results with, and what kind of decisions they will be making or actions they hope to inspire
- Learn more about stakeholders, such as program participants, and opportunities and barriers for engaging them in the project
- Interview key informants to inform study design and data collection
A scoping exercise or inception phase produces information that can be relied upon for decision making and lays the groundwork for a success. Taking this path at the start helps to ensure that the data collected will be of the highest quality, determines where adjustments may need to be made, uncover what research exists, establish where the gaps are, and where the study can make the most valuable contribution to the field. To learn more about scoping studies, you may refer to the following resources:
- Slide presentation: What is a Scoping Study? By Alan Boyd and Michelle Bastian
- Scoping studies: advancing the methodology from the National Institute of Health