Table 2:

Considerations for Stakeholder Engagement Strategies. A comparison of the stakeholder engagement strategies utilized by the CSER project groups highlighting some benefits and challenges for each approach.

Approach	Benefits	Challenges
Advisory Committees	•  Partnership between researchers and community •  Long term relationship throughout the research project facilitates broader ideas and applications	•  May not be representative of target population •  Requires significant time commitment from research team and stakeholders over course of the full project or as standing committee •  Requires transparency and shared decisionmaking
Targeted One-on-One Feedback	•  Time and method can be tailored for convenience of the stakeholder •  Reduces constraints of transportation and childcare •  Increased privacy of discussion may enable deeper sharing •  Recruitment on an individual level can refine representativeness	•  No group dynamic •  Limited number of stakeholders •  Feedback may be more individual compared to community/broader level •  Feedback may not be representative of target
Feedback / Pilot Groups	•  Group dynamics can introduce new and converging ideas •  Can enables perspective from larger numbers of stakeholders via separate groups •  Allows further exploration of responses through repeat meetings	•  Discussion can be dominated by stronger personalities •  Need to coordinate space/time to meet needs of group (e.g., evenings, weekends) •  Need to consider other supports to enable participation (e.g., travel, food, childcare)
Community Engagement Studios	•  Facilitated by a neutral moderator •  Enables teams to tap into readily available expertise and processes	•  Representative populations recruited by moderator may be different than target study population •  Consulting fees for facilitators may be higher than internal teams
Consortium Stakeholder Group	•  Representation across the consortium projects •  Enables broader discussion on shared themes •  Increases diversity and/or generalizability of perspectives •  Interaction with/influence on consortium leadership and funders	•  Scheduling/communications and budgeting logistics across a broad geographic area •  Issues and/or feedback may not be applicable to a specific project •  Consortium level issues may not be as relevant to the local project stakeholder •  Consortium-level issues may not be as relevant to the local project stakeholder leading to less feedback
Deliberative Democracy	•  Includes community voice from the population studied •  Includes relevant subject matter experts on the target issue •  Aims to propose policy or opinion about a defined issue through consensus building •  Resulting policy/proposal reflects the informed opinion of the stakeholders	•  Significant time commitment from research team and stakeholders over a defined period of time •  May involve large numbers of stakeholders representing multiple perspectives •  Can require a team of facilitators to coordinate •  Often includes significant capacity building through informational presentations to enable informed deliberation
Human-Centered Design	•  Iterative process that involves direct collaboration with stakeholders •  Participatory design results in solutions that are more relevant, meaningful, and useful to stakeholders	•  Significant time commitment from research team and stakeholders •  Stakeholders may not be representative of overall participant population