Background: There has been a substantial increase in the conduct of natural experimental evaluations in the last ten years. This has been driven by advances in methodology, greater availability of large routinely collected datasets, and a rise in demand for evidence about the impacts of upstream population health interventions. amenable to natural experimental evaluation. It is important that researchers, practitioners, commissioners, and users of intervention research are aware of the recent developments. This new framework updates and extends existing MRC guidance for using natural experiments to evaluate population health interventions. Methods: The framework was developed with input from three international workshops and an online consultation with researchers, journal editors, funding representatives, and individuals with experience of using and commissioning natural experimental evaluations. The objective was to identify any additional content, unnecessary content, any topics of contention, and whether there were any revisions required to the structure of the guidance.
The purpose of the workshops was to obtain expert opinion on the first draft of guidance, a key decision point in the guidance development. The objective was to identify any additional content, unnecessary content, any topics of contention, and whether there were any revisions required to the structure of the guidance. Input was sought from international researchers, policymakers, journal editors, and end users of natural experimental evaluations. Three workshops, all with the same content, were held at different times of day to facilitate participation from participants from different worldwide time zones. Feedback from the workshops was used by the project team to compile a draft of guidance that was issued for consultation. An online consultation invited participants to read and comment on current draft sections of the guidance. Invited participants included researchers, practitioners, policymakers, journal editors, funder representatives to capture opinion from individuals involved in commissioning, conducting, and using evidence from natural experimental evaluations. Feedback from the consultation was used to revise the draft sections. Details of data collection: The data collection comprises content from Padlet virtual posting boards from the three stakeholder workshops and de-identified responses to the online consultation. Participants were recruited for the workshop through co-investigator and advisory group networks and individuals identified as the framework was developed. Authors of academic articles reporting natural experimental evaluations in population health were identified as the framework content was developed and invited to participate in the workshop. Relevant stakeholders in the research community were also recruited, representing funders from international funding boards, journal editors and peer reviewers of journal reporting on natural experimental evaluations. Knowledge within the project team and project advisory group was used to add to the list of people with professional expertise of natural experimental evaluations population health interventions. For the online consultation, individuals invited to take part included individuals involved in commissioning, conducting, and using evidence from natural experimental evaluations, i.e., researchers, local and national government representatives and practitioners, policymakers, journal editors and funder representatives. Invitees were identified from among those invited to the previous workshops, recommendations from the project advisory group, and ‘snowball’ invitation suggestions from participants. Members of the NIHR School for Public Health Research (SPHR) Network for the use of Natural Experiments in Public Health were also invited.
