Research Quality Plus: A Holistic Approach to Evaluating Research

16 March 2016

IDRC’s Evaluation Division has developed a new and exiting Research Quality evaluation approach that brings together several bodies of knowledge on the subject.

The approach, named: Research Quality Plus (RQ+) as been authored by:

  • Zenda Ofir,  Independent Evaluator, Honorary Professor, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa
  • Thomas Schwandt, Professor, University Of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA
  • Colleen Duggan, Senior Program Specialist, Policy and Evaluation Division, International Development Research Centre, Canada
  • Robert McLean, Senior Program Specialist, Policy and Evaluation Division, International Development Research Centre, Canada Lead Evaluator, Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Canada

It has been reviewed by an international panel of experts and practitioners.

The approach covers 4 areas that it considers central to assessing research quality:

  1. Research Integrity
  2. Research Legitimacy
  3. Research Importance
  4. Positioning for Use

The first three dimensions – Research Integrity, Legitimacy and Importance – are the core quality features typically found in more or less developed forms in most research quality assessment frameworks. The fourth dimension – Positioning for Use – is less typical and is the plus (RQ+) feature of the framework. During the Framework development process, IDRC and its research part- ners determined that it would be reasonable to hold themselves accountable for taking steps to increase the likelihood that the research would be used – in other words, for positioning the research findings for influence and eventual impact.