A rapid tool for understanding how knowledge users engage with research findings in research-for-development contexts

Promoting the use of research findings in development projects is essential but often overlooked during study design. Existing frameworks for research use tend to focus on clinical settings and offer questionable applicability to development contexts, which are typically nonlinear, dynamic and cross-sectoral. As a result, there remains a gap in tools that can capture how evidence is intended to be applied by diverse knowledge users in real-world development settings. To address this gap, and drawing on over a decade of experience implementing research-to-action strategies, our objective is to develop a simple research uptake and use tool to better understand and support the use of evidence in research-for-development. We piloted the tool immediately after or 1 month following dissemination workshops, engaging 206 participants across nine sessions in five countries - Kenya, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Malawi, and Vietnam - to gather insights on which evidence was most relevant, how participants intended to apply it and why they valued it. Although conceptualized with a focus on agriculture and global health research, this framework is broadly applicable across the wider development sector in low- and middle-income countries.