Priority Setting Project 2016

Cochrane Tobacco Addiction Group 

Twentieth Anniversary Priority Setting (CTAG taps)

The CTAG taps project ran from January-December 2016, as part of the Cochrane Tobacco Addiction Group's 20th Anniversary celebrations.

Activities carried out from April 2016-December 2016 were funded by the NIHR School for Primary Care Research (SPCR)

People involved in the project are below. Click on each persons name to find out more about them and their work:

Principal Investigator: Nicola Lindson [University of Oxford]*

Co-applicants: Jamie Hartmann-BoycePaul AveyardDan Richards-Doran; Lindsay Stead [all University of Oxford]

Collaborators: Robert West [UCL]; John Hughes [University of Vermont]

*Contact information: nicola.lindson@phc.ox.ac.uk; +44 1865 289320

Project Aims

  • To raise awareness of the Cochrane Tobacco Addiction Group, and what the group has achieved so far
  • To identify areas where further research is needed in the areas of tobacco control and smoking cessation from a wider stakeholder perspective

  • To identify Cochrane TAG specific research goals from a wider stakeholder perspective

  • To raise awareness of the group’s future goals and opportunities arising for authors from this

Key stages

  1. Survey phase 1: targeting the following stakeholder groups in the area of tobacco control: guideline developers, policy makers, clinicians and associated health professionals, smokers and former smokers, and researchers (both policy and clinically based). We recruited participants internationally, including from low-income countries. The survey asked participants what questions they would still like to see answered by tobacco control research
  2. Survey phase 2: the findings of survey phase 1 were fed back to survey respondents, and in a simplified Delphi process the same participants prioritised the remaining identified uncertainties.
  3. Workshop: we held a one day workshop at the University of Oxford. We invited participants made up of guideline developers, policy makers, clinicians and associated health professionals, smokers and former smokers, and researchers (policy and clinically based). Forty-three stakeholders (including 15 members of the public) attended, plus 15 facilitators and CTAG members. The day began with presentations by the editors of Cochrane TAG, including information on the history of the group; how the group would like to move forward in the future and findings of the survey. For the second part of the day participants were split into groups made up of a mixture of stakeholder representatives and encouraged to discuss the research uncertainties identified in direct relation to the work of the Cochrane Tobacco Addiction Group. Each group were asked to feedback the key uncertainties and dissemination ideas they identified, and how these could be transferred into the aims of Cochrane TAG, in a workshop wide discussion.
  4. Report writing: The findings of the survey and the workshop were written up into a research report and have been published as a journal article.
  5. Priorities: we have begun working on the priorities identified during the CTAG taps project, and this will continue into the future.

Use the menu links on the left-hand side to find out more about 'Project activity' and how we promoted the project and the group during 2016; the 'Priority setting workshop' we carried out with key stakeholders; and 'What we found'.