Reflections on Outsourcing and Applying for Funding

Abstract

In agencies aiming at formulating recommendations to policymakers, such as the Belgian Health Care Knowledge Centre (KCE), data collection – especially in qualitative methods – is often outsourced to academic teams or private companies, consultants, commercial agencies or research consultancies. This chapter focuses on comparing the approach to using focus groups taken by academic and non-academic research teams. More specifically it assesses: (i) the kind of expertise they bring to bear in responding to tenders; (ii) their skills with regard to working in several languages (important in a multi-lingual country such as Belgium); (iii) the proposed cost; (iv) their scientific approach; (v) their capacity to recruit participants; and (vi) their analysis and reporting skills. They were found to differ with regard to their specific strengths. Such collaboration takes time and requires a pragmatic focus (i.e. developing policy recommendations) rather than a theoretical focus. Thus, academic teams should not seek funding to pursue their own fundamental research, while non-academic teams would be well-advised to include a topic expert in their team.