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Added: March 29, 2021
Updated: July 9, 2024
Funding organisations rely on a number of strategies to make recommendations for the allocation of research funding fair and transparent. A panel of experts, also referred to as funding committees, are often considered integral to the decision-making process for allocating research funding. It is therefore important to understand the role of funding committees, in terms of the social interactions and dynamics and how a common understanding is reached by the committee members. However, there is limited research investigating the role of members and the social interactions and processes which cannot be explored through survey or interview methods alone.
As a result of COVID-19, the NIHR chose to conduct some funding committee meetings completely virtual. It is from this unprecedented global health situation that the proposed research was adapted to focus on the social dynamics within technological contexts to understand online communication and interactions. Originating from hospitality and tourism research, netnography is an established method for conducting social media research. It is therefore our intention to conduct a netnographic study on virtual funding committee practices to understand how members participate (e.g. social interactions), insight into using online forms of communication (e.g. cultural changes), and the benefits, challenges and barriers to using online platforms (e.g. to explore future considerations).
The aims of the study are to examine and explore NIHR’s virtual funding committee meetings in terms of the formal (processes, technology, and resources) and informal (social interactions, social dynamics, perceptions, attitudes and expectations), implicit and explicit decision-making practices. A range of methods and approaches will be used to gather data that will be in text (e.g. documents, transcripts, data spreadsheets) and non-text data (e.g. videos, audio). By following the principles of netnography, all three types of data operations will be included in the study:
- Investigative: online social media data (recordings of funding committee meetings)
- Interactive: interviews with funding committee members and secretariat, and an online survey with all funding committee members
- Immersive: to assist the netnographic study an immersive journal will be kept to reflect, analyse and guide research process and decision-making
As far as we know this is the first netnographic study to explore social systems of shared meaning and the cultural understandings of virtual funding committee practice.
Added: March 23, 2021
Updated: October 24, 2022
This is a qualitative multi-methods study integrating document analyses and interviews. Following Ethics approval from the Faculty of Medicine Ethics committee, a sample of (n=138) documents linked to applications was selected for content analysis. Eight interviews with programme directors, reviewers and applicants, published studies, guidelines, impact literacy blogs, and checklists informed the analytical framework and interpretation of results.