Table 3.

Consequences of government influence.

Nature of the consequence(s)	Citation	Topic of research	Reported reason for government involvement	Reported consequences
POSITIVE IMPACTS	(Gordon et al. 2018)	Blood-borne viruses and sexually transmissible infections	To support the delivery of policy-relevant research, strategic advice, capacity building and communications	The influence improved the likelihood that the research generated would be used in policy and practice, created responsiveness to emerging policy-relevant research priorities, generated cost efficiencies, and streamlined management and reporting
	(Williamson et al. 2019)	Health and health-related	To access additional skills, gain advice, access networks, create evidence, and support evidence-based decisions	Government involvement created nuanced and relevant outputs, allowed research to align with ‘real world’ priorities, allowed long-term, trusting relationships to develop, and gained mutual benefits for all entities
NEGATIVE IMPACTS	(Storeng and Palmer 2019)	Sexual Health	To mitigate ‘risks’ that the outputs might pose	Tensions between researchers and the government-associated body led to investigations by the university’s Research Governance and Integrity Office, which prevented scheduled conference attendance, halted publications; the NGOs (directed by the government) controlled which findings were made public; censored the research, prevented substantiation of analysis; left the decision-making to the ethics committee; created hesitation in publishing findings that do not support the programme resulting in unpublished findings; the research is not available for future learning
	(Gornall 2014)	Alcohol	To obtain (and manipulate) evidence on the use of the minimum unit price of alcohol to reduce alcohol use and health harms	The influence may have contributed to the retraction of the decision to use minimum unit pricing for a new alcohol policy
NEUTRAL IMPACTS	(The LSE GV314 Group 2014)	Health policy and programmes	To evaluate specific government policy or programme activities	The modes of influence used produced the research outcomes that the government desired whilst also preserving research integrity
	(Smith 2014)	Health inequalities	To obtain evidence to use in policymaking	Government involvement led to research that was more aligned with policy needs and, therefore, more likely to have a policy impact. It guided research towards downstream determinants of health and generated evidence that resulted in less challenging policy ideas