Good Practice Action 1: Priorities

Set research priorities through evidence syntheses and stakeholder engagement to ensure trials address recognised needs

Informative trials will address research priorities based on existing evidence that shows a real need for the research. Research priority setting will be coordinated across stakeholders to ensure that trials are set up to deliver meaningful benefits to target populations. Failure to align research priorities with existing evidence and stakeholder input can result in trials focusing on areas of low relevance, leading to wasted resources and missed opportunities to address critical health needs.

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Trial teams and others should:

– Draw on multiple forms of existing evidence. This could include:

  • systematic reviews
  • meta-analyses
  • scoping reviews
  • Value of Information (VOI) analysis
  • biological knowledge
  • preliminary data
  • pre-clinical data

The REVEAL (prior evidence for new trials) guidance is an intuitive, structured framework to help clinical researchers efficiently and systematically review existing evidence when planning a new trial (Griebler et al., 2026).

The INveStigating ProblEmatic Clinical Trials in Systematic Reviews (INSPECT-SR) tool

has been developed for assessing the trustworthiness of randomised controlled trials

– Coordinate with stakeholders to understand the justification for the trial. Stakeholders may be:

  • guideline producers
  • local healthcare professionals
  • people with lived experience of a condition or disease
  • relevant communities (a resource to help research teams consider how everyone relevant is included in the trial is the INCLUDE project.

More resources about building trusted relationships with stakeholders can be found in Good Practice Action 3.

How funders can ensure this happens

  1. Ask research teams about their rationale for why the trial is needed, based on multiple forms of existing evidence, such as those listed above
  2. Ask how their interactions with stakeholders, such as those listed above, led to recommendations which have informed the research priorities
  3. An example question to ask can be found in the INFORM Structured Grant Form Question {3}.
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