Identification of indicators for developing a scale for evaluating multisectoral collaboration during response to public health emergencies. A scoping review.

Background This is part of a broader PhD study titled Performance of multisectoral collaboration (MSC) in the management of global public health emergencies (PHEs): an analysis of Uganda's response to Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) outbreaks. The general objective of the broader PhD study is to develop a valid and reliable scale for evaluating MSC during response to PHEs. The developed scale will be applied to evaluate MSC during Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) outbreak response in Uganda. The PhD study will be implemented through three sub-studies; 1, 2 and 3. According to Boateng and colleagues (2018), development and validation of scales for health begins with identification of items/indicators to be used in scale development, which is the objective of sub-study 1. To identify the indicators to be used in development of a scale for evaluating MSC during response to PHEs, a scoping review will be implemented. Objective The objective of this scoping review (sub-study 1 of the PhD study) is to identify indicators for use in development of a scale for evaluating MSC during response to PHEs. Methods The scoping study will be guided by 2 frameworks combined together; 1) the 6 steps of conducting a scoping study as described by Arksey and O'Malley (2005) and 2) the PRISMA extension for scoping reviews. Specification of the question The scoping review will be guided by the question; What is known from published literature about how to evaluate MSC during response to PHEs? Identification of relevant studies Relevant records will be searched from 2 online databases; SCOPUS and EMBASE. Any additional databases searched will also be specified. Using the advanced search option, key words; indicators, evaluation, multisectoral collaboration and public health emergencies and their synonyms will be used to generate search queries that will later be combined with the Boolean operator AND to generate a full search strategy which will be used to search selected online databases. We will decide on whether to limit or widen the search to using multiple variables after getting a sense of the volume of potential records available for retrieval. We will report the final electronic search strategy used for each online database searched. Study selection All the retrieved will be exported to Endnote for screening. Next, we will read the titles to remove duplicates and eliminate irrelevant records. If relevance is unclear from the title, we will proceed to read the abstract and eliminate irrelevant records. For all the retained records, their full articles will be retrieved and included in the review. Retained records whose full articles cannot be retrieved will be excluded. We will not exclude any article on the basis of its reporting quality. However, we will summarize the quality of each reviewed article using a scale of 0/1 for clarity/adequate description of; 1) study objective, 2) study design, 3) sampling, 4) respondent X-tics, 5) data collection methods, 6) data analysis method, 7) key findings, 8) credibility, transferability, replicability and confirmability, 9) study strengths and 10) study weaknesses. We will also use a PRISMA flow chat to summarize the study selection process. Plan for data analysis (coding, extracting and summarizing data from included articles) We identified the integrative framework for collaborative governance as the a priori framework to guide the charting process. This was selected because it is synthesized from other frameworks, elaborate in illustrating collaborative dynamics and is referenced frequently. For charting, we will follow the best framework method as described by Carroll and colleagues (2013). We will read every included article to identify text segments relating to how MSC can be/was evaluated at process, output/outcome and impact/population level. These meaning units will be extracted verbatim and summarized into an Excel-like summary form. The columns in the summary form will correspond to every reviewed article. The rows will correspond to a potential indicator for evaluating MSC. The potential indicators will be grouped under themes and sub-themes corresponding to the domains and sub-domains elaborated by the integrative framework for collaborative governance, the a priori framework. The first about 5 articles will be double coded by the doctoral student and the primary supervisor. If the level of coding agreement is acceptable, subsequent articles will be coded, charted and summarized by the doctoral student alone. Any emergent themes and indicators beyond those specified by the a priori framework will be coded inductively and charted within the same summary form. Plan for data analysis (descriptive and analytical synthesis of charted data) Data extracted from retrieved articles and summarized in the Excel-like summary form will be analyzed by thematic synthesis following the steps described by Thomas and Harden (2008). We will first conduct a descriptive analysis of the reviewed articles and a descriptive analysis of the quality of reviewed articles using data collected in the summary form for quality of reviewed articles. Next, we will conduct a descriptive analysis of the data summarized in the charting form including the coding density of each MSC measurement element. At analytical synthesis, and as a means of moving beyond just a descriptive summary of what is contained reviewed studies, we will iterate the identified indicators within and between the old (deductive) and new (indictive) themes to produce a more pragmatic MSC measurement framework. We will report our methods and results following the PRISMA Extension for scoping reviews.