Development and evaluation of a quality assessment tool for equality, diversity, and inclusion (QUALITY-EDI) within healthcare research

Implementing equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in healthcare research is critical to ensuring findings are translatable and provide the greatest benefit to patients who need it most. A quality assessment scoring tool (QUALITY-EDI) was developed to evaluate the conduct of EDI in healthcare research across all stages of the research cycle. To achieve this, a multidisciplinary working group comprising 22 members was established, including clinicians, researchers, and patient and public advocates. Using the National Institute for Health and Care Research’s Research Support Service EDI toolkit as an initial framework, a workshop with 16 public representatives co-designed elements of the proposed QUALITY-EDI tool. The tool was subsequently refined by the working group to have eight domains: research context; study design; data collection; data analysis and interpretation; knowledge mobilisation; research team diversity; patient and public involvement; and budgeting for research inclusion. QUALITY-EDI can be used by researchers, journal editors, reviewers, funders, lay members, and other interest holders to assess and monitor the quality of EDI implementation.