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PERSPECTIVE article

Front. Vet. Sci.
Sec. Veterinary Epidemiology and Economics
Volume 11 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fvets.2024.1444023

Aligning valid research outcomes with stakeholder values -what do they need for decision-making?

Provisionally accepted
David G. Renter David G. Renter 1*Jan M. Sargeant Jan M. Sargeant 2Annette M. O'Connor Annette M. O'Connor 3Audrey Ruple Audrey Ruple 4
  • 1 Kansas State University, Manhattan, United States
  • 2 University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada
  • 3 Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, United States
  • 4 Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    This paper is derived from a presentation given by the first author at the 2024 Symposium for the Calvin Schwabe Award, presented to Dr. Jan Sargeant for Lifetime Achievement in Veterinary Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine. Researchers must work toward ensuring validity throughout the research process, but we also should ensure that our resulting outcomes are specified to appropriately inform and enable decision-making by the end-users. Given the scope and diversity of topics addressed by veterinary researchers, the potential beneficiaries or stakeholders of our research also varies. Stakeholders or end-users may include veterinary practitioners, other researchers, livestock owners, "pet parents", government officials, corporate entities, or the general public in the case of public health or food security and safety issues. Current research in animal agriculture provides an opportunity to consider research outcomes in a sustainability framework which concurrently values social, economic, and environment impacts of animal health and management decisions. In companion animals, contemporary issues of affordability and access to care, quality of life, or compliance effects on efficacy, also extend the spectrum of relevant research outcomes. In these cases, traditional measures of animal health, such as morbidity, mortality, or weight gain, may not be the most relevant for the end-users. Furthermore, if studies are not designed and analyzed with well-defined primary outcomes that are informed by stakeholders' values, but rather post-hoc considerations of these values are made based on indirect or surrogate measures, there is the potential to incorporate error and bias into our conclusions and the end-users' decision-making processes.

    Keywords: outcomes, Veterinary, validity, Research Impact, outcomes research

    Received: 04 Jun 2024; Accepted: 29 Aug 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Renter, Sargeant, O'Connor and Ruple. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: David G. Renter, Kansas State University, Manhattan, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.