Effects of an Evidence Service on Community-based AIDS Service Organizations' Use of Research Evidence: A Protocol for a Randomized Controlled Trial

Background To support the use of research evidence by community-based organizations the investigators have developed 'Synthesized HIV/AIDS Research Evidence' (SHARE), which is an evidence service for those working in the HIV sector. SHARE consists of several components: 1) an online searchable database of HIV-relevant systematic reviews (retrievable based on a taxonomy of topics related to HIV/AIDS and open text search), 2) periodic email updates, 3) access to user-friendly summaries, and 4) peer relevance assessments. The objective is to evaluate whether this "full serve" evidence service increases the use of research evidence by community-based organizations as compared to a "self-serve" evidence service.

Methods/design The investigators will conduct a two-arm randomized controlled trial (RCT), along with a follow-up qualitative process study to explore the findings in greater depth. All community-based organizations affiliated with Canadian AIDS Society (n=120) will be invited to participate and will be randomized to receive either the "full-serve" version of SHARE or the "self-serve" version (a listing of relevant systematic reviews with links to records on PubMed and worksheets that help community-based organizations find and use research evidence) using a simple randomized design. All management and staff from each organization will be provided access to the version of SHARE that their organization is allocated to. The trial duration will be 10 months (two-month baseline period, six-month intervention period, and two month cross-over period), the primary outcome measure will be the mean number of logins/month/organization (averaged across the number of users from each organization) between baseline and the end of the intervention period and the secondary outcome will be intention to use research evidence as measured by a survey administered to one key decision-maker from each organization. For the qualitative study, one key organizational decision-maker from 15 organizations in each trial arm (n=30) will be purposively sampled. One-on-one semi-structured interviews will be conducted by telephone on their views about and their experiences with the evidence service they received, how helpful it was in their work, why it was helpful (or not helpful), what aspects were most and least helpful and why, and recommendations for next steps.