Methodological Tools

Methodological tools provide guidelines and tips for carrying out various methodological aspects of research more quickly and efficiently.

Organizational Participatory Research (OPR) practice guide

A Guide to Implementing Organizational Participatory Research (OPR)

Available in English and French, this guide provides recommendations to help all stakeholders (researchers, clinicians, managers and patient partners) implement a participatory research project aimed at improving practices in one or multiple health organization(s).

Authors: Bush (McGill) & Tremblay (ULaval)

Link: OPR Practice Guide

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Recommendations in Organizational Participatory Research (OPR)

Recommendations for building partnerships in patient-oriented research

This tool summarizes the recommendations of the OPR Guide and can be used as a reminder when planning OPR projects and at OPR meetings.

Author: El Sherif (McGill)

Links: OPR Recommendations (English) or Recommandations RPO (français)

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Question Assessment Tool

A tool to assess the clarity of your quantitative and qualitative questions when conducting a study.

This tool can be used to help you assess the clarity of your Quality Improvement (QI) question based on five elements (clear or unclear). It includes suggestions on how to improve your question.

Author: El Sherif (McGill)

Links: Question Assessment Tool (English) or Outil d’évaluation des questions (français)

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Rapid and Rigorous TransCultural Adaptation (RR-TCA)

A toolkit to perform a Rapid and Rigorous TransCultural Adaptation (RR-TCA version V1©) of program evaluation and quality improvement questionnaires.

The purpose of this toolkit is to provide a set of practical recommendations for performing Rapid and Rigorous TransCultural Adaptation (RR-TCA) of questionnaires used in program evaluation and quality improvement (e.g., questionnaires
developed and validated in English, but not available in French).

Authors: CHILD-BRIGHT & El Sherif (SPOR & McGill)

Links: This tool is available in English and French.

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The Community of Practice evaluation questionnaire (CoPeval)

This tool enables Community of Practice (CoP) coordinators and facilitators to assess the processes and effects of their CoP. These stakeholders can be researchers, clinicians, managers, or patient-partners. They can use the results obtained with this tool to improve their CoP. In each implementation context, an ecological validation of the content of the items with the users of the CoPeval questionnaire is necessary before any use. We have developed an application that can help you do this. Contact us if you need it, or if you have any questions.

Authors: Hamzeh J., Johnson-Lafleur J., Ouellet C., Granikov V., Pluye P. & Nadeau L.

Links: CoPeval

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Questionnaire Origin & Development Appraisal (QODA)

This critical appraisal tool is used to assess the quality of both the origin and the initial development of any questionnaire used for assessing clinical practice, educational programs, and health service/policy.

Authors: Hamzeh J., Kaur N., Bush P., Hudon C., Schuster T., Vedel I., Hong Q. N., and Pluye P.

Lien: QODA (en anglais)

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List of Criteria Used in Help Grids for Description and the Extraction of Data from Population Interventions (DEDPI)

This tool presents a list of criteria used to describe population-based interventions in a literature review. For each study included in the review, this list is used to guide the extraction of essential data to describe these interventions. While awaiting the simplification and validation of this list, this tool recommends the use of a validated grid translated into French (TIDIER).

Authors: Hong (EPPI center) & Pluye (McGill)

Link: List of criteria DEDPI (French)

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Critical Appraisal Tools Evaluation (CATeval)

Website aiming at presenting CATs whose validity and/or fidelity have been tested

Assessing the quality of studies is an important step in systematic reviews. Critical appraisal tools (CATs) are used to help students, professionals, and researchers judge whether a study is trustworthy. More than 500 tools exist to help conduct a quality assessment. However, few of these tools have been tested for validity and reliability. The purpose of this website is to present CATs that have been tested for validity and/or fidelity.

Author: Hong Q.N.

Link: https://www.catevaluation.ca/index.php/en/

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Guidelines for Securing Data in POR

Guide to securing data in POR (patient-oriented research)

This guide presents best practices in secure data management for researchers, decision-makers and patient-partners.

Author: Bartlett-Esquilant, G.

Link: Coming soon!

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ENGAGE+

Website to support the research engagement of people experiencing social exclusion in society and research and to reduce barriers between academic research and community members.

ENGAGE+ is a website that has been co-developed by community partners and researchers to support the engagement of people experiencing social exclusion in research and research and to reduce barriers between community members and academic researchers. This site contains a wealth of information to help community members and researchers better understand the foundations of participatory research and proposes visual methods that can promote the participation of populations under-represented in research and affected by social inequalities, poverty, and low literacy.

Author: Loignon, C.

Link: https://engageplus.org/en/

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Data Security Best Practices Guidelines

Best practices in secure data management for researchers, decision-makers and patient-partners.

An internet-based guidelines (text and video) that describes the best practices for data management based on different levels of sensitivity of the data.

Authors: Schuster & Fung (McGill)

Link: Coming soon!

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Methodological Guide for Carrying Out Environmental Scans

Proposal of standards for the environmental scan method

This project will allow the production of a journal review, and the development of a scoping review protocol. The completion of the scoping review will provide a true status report on the method in health research, and will identify the prerequisites for a consultation of researchers leading to the proposal of standards for the method, which could be carried out in partnership with the SPOR evidence network (to be confirmed).

Principal Investigator: Marie-Ève Lamontagne (ULaval)

Link: Download the guide (in French only)

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Weight of Evidence

Weight of Evidence is a patient-oriented evidence synthesis and evaluation tool for co-construction of knowledge with patients, researchers, clinicians, and program-policy advisors.

The tool engages patients without prejudging or setting limits on how they see the issue in question, and includes their perspectives by weighting published evidence. Fuzzy cognitive maps are relatively independent of culture, language or educational level, and can be completed without a disproportionate time investment from care providers and patients. Weight of Evidence provides a transparent and rigorous approach to bring diverse perspectives into conversation with one another, for collaborative design of recommendations. Integrating provider and patient perspectives with published evidence, this method reconciles expert opinion and lived experience in evidence synthesis, generating sharper and more robust inferences for fully informed decision-making

Principal Investigator: Andersson (McGill)

Link: The method article

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McGill Empowerment Assessment–Diabetes (MEA-D)

The purpose of the MEA-D is to assess a person’s experience with diabetes. This assessment may be useful for informing strategies to improve diabetes care. 

Diabetes Mellitus (DM) is a prevalent chronic condition that poses a major burden for patients and the healthcare system. Evidence suggests that patient engagement in self-care improves DM control and reduces the risk of complications. According to Diabetes Canada, patient empowerment is an important factor in self-care and diabetes control. To provide effective interventions that help empower patients with diabetes, a comprehensive, valid and reliable measure of empowerment is needed. The present details the development of the McGill Empowerment Assessment – Diabetes (MEA-D), a questionnaire for measuring the empowerment of people living with diabetes, and its construct validation using a representative sample of Canadians living with DM.

Authors: Pluye & El Sherif (McGill), Hersson-Edery (Santé Kildare), Justin Gagnon, Charo Rodriguez, Jennifer Reoch

Link: Learn more about the questionnaire

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Guide to a Sensitive Approach to Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) in Research and a Comparative Sex- and Gender-Based Analysis (SBGA)

The Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) and Sex and Gender-Based Analysis (SBGA) mandates adopted in recent years by academic bodies require research teams to meet criteria when submitting grant applications. Following this premise, this document aims to accompany research teams in an approach sensitive to EDI-G and SBGA.

This document is a complement to those available online in Quebec, Canada, and internationally.

• This guide is the result of a rapid review of guidelines and best practices that
support research teams for EDI- and SGBA-responsive proposals.
• The added value of this document lies in its alignment of the best practices within
the Unité de soutien SSA Québec guidelines.
• It suggests considerations of EDI and SBGA at the intersection of the social
determinants of health as part of the differentiated trajectories of the populations
involved in the research;
• A list of resources related to EDI and SGBA considerations in research (scientific
articles, action plans, guidelines) is available at the end of this document.

Authors: Bilkis Vissandjée, PhD & Isabel Fernandez, MSc

Acknowledgments: Olivier Dufault & Deka Abdourahman Ali

Link: Download the document