Brief Reminders as Intervention for Greater Engagement of Cochrane Translators

Interventions for Increasing Volunteer Engagement in Knowledge Translation Activity of Translating Cochrane Plain Language Summaries: a Randomized Controlled Trial

The intervention will consist of reminders which will be send to the participants randomly via email, with aim to increase the frequency and amount of translated plain language summaries (PLS).

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Knowledge Translation
• Intervention / Treatment: Other: Reminders

Detailed Description

All study participants who accept participation in the study will be initially assigned 3 PLSs, and subsequently they will be assigned more PLSs when they translated the previous ones. Intervention group will receive one customized e-mail reminder two weeks after the PLS assignment if they do not translate it within two weeks. If they still do not translate the PLS, they will receive another customized e-mail reminder after every two weeks until they translate the PLS or until we reach maximum of 4 bi-weekly reminders (at 2 weeks, 4 weeks, 6 weeks and 8 weeks post-assignment) or until participants indicate that they are unable to translate it anymore. Text of the reminder that will be sent to the study participants is available in Supplementary file 1. The reminders will be customized for each PLS, and they will contain a name of the PLS indicated in the message. If the participants do not translate PLS within 2 months from PLS assignment, we will stop sending them reminders and we will consider them as dropouts.

Control group will receive no intervention, i.e. standard procedure. Participants in the control group will receive PLSs for translation, in the frequency they indicated, and they will not receive any reminders. They will be assigned new PLSs once they translate the ones that were previously assigned.

All PLSs will be translated in Memsource, a translation management tool that Cochrane plans to start using since March 2018 for managing translation of summaries. Participants will be followed 6 months from the moment of allocation.

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 80
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• Croatia
  • Split-Dalmatia County
    • Split, Split-Dalmatia County, Croatia, 21000
      • University of Split School of Medicine

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 18 years to 65 years (Adult, Older Adult)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No
• Genders Eligible for Study: All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• adults ≥18 years who volunteered to translate Cochrane PLSs within the Croatian translation project.

Exclusion Criteria:

• none

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Treatment
• Allocation: Randomized
• Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
• Masking: Double

Number of Arms

2

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Reminders; Reminders customized for each PLS, containing a name of the PLS indicated in the message. If the participants do not translate PLS within 2 months from PLS assignment, we will stop sending them reminders and we will consider them as dropouts.	Other: Reminders; Personalized email which will aim for reminding of the translator about the PLSs on hold.
No Intervention: Control group; Control group will receive no intervention, i.e. standard procedure. Participants in the control group will receive PLSs for translation, in the frequency they indicated, and they will not receive any reminders. They will be assigned new PLSs once they translate the ones that were previously assigned.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Number of translated PLSs within the 6 month follow-up	The number of translated PLSs will be scored in the six months period for a participant	6 months

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Number of translated PLSs after 3 months of follow up	The number of translated PLSs will be scored in the three months period for a participant	3 months
Time to submitting translation	The investigators will note the time needed to submit translation	6 months
Satisfaction with participation in the translation project	Likert type scale from 1 to 10 (ranging from 1-completely unsatisfactory to 10-completely satisfactory)	6 months
Loss of participants	Loss of participants from the trial at final follow-up of 6 months, defined as participants' message that they wish to stop translating during the trial period, without later messages during the trial that they wish to engage in translation again.	6 months

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: University of Split, School of Medicine
• Collaborators: Croatian Science Foundation
• Investigators: Principal Investigator: Dalibora Behmen, Professor, Researcher and administrator

Publications and helpful links

General Publications

• Jakus D, Behmen D, Buljan I, Marusic A, Puljak L. Efficacy of reminders for increasing volunteer engagement in translating Cochrane plain language summaries: a pilot randomised controlled trial. BMJ Evid Based Med. 2021 Apr;26(2):49-50. doi: 10.1136/bmjebm-2020-111378. Epub 2020 Jul 7.

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): May 1, 2018
• Primary Completion (Actual): June 28, 2019
• Study Completion (Actual): June 28, 2019

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: May 9, 2018
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: May 22, 2018
• First Posted (Actual): May 23, 2018

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): July 5, 2019
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: July 3, 2019
• Last Verified: July 1, 2019

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Other Study ID Numbers: 2014- 09-7672

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: Yes
• IPD Plan Description: Raw data will be posted to the Figshare repository (https://figshare.com/)
• IPD Sharing Time Frame: Within 12 months from study completion. The data will remain in the public repository indefinitely.
• IPD Sharing Access Criteria: Open access, publicly available

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No
• product manufactured in and exported from the U.S.: No