Identifying barriers to the use of research faced by public health physicians in Norway and developing an intervention to reduce them

Abstract

Objectives: To explore why public health physicians seldom use research-based information and to develop an intervention to remedy this on the basis of this study, other research literature and suitable theories of information-seeking and professional behaviour change.

Methods: A qualitative study was conducted using focus groups, observation of individuals and interviews. The setting was Norwegian public health practice; 52 public health physicians from all over Norway participated in the study.

Results: We identified several barriers to the use of scientific literature that could be categorised as: psychological variables; environmental variables; and source characteristics. We developed an intervention that attempts to address these barriers, informed by previous research on the effectiveness of interventions to change professional practice and incorporating elements from social cognitive theories and the theory of innovation diffusion.

Conclusions: The Norwegian public health physician works in an isolated environment which does not facilitate searching or obtaining scientific information, which does not ask for this information and far less encourages its use as a basis for decision-making. An intervention tailored to reduce some of the barriers to research use may lead to more frequent and extensive use of such information in public health decision-making.