Research collaborations and research meetings in African Health Research - Questionnaire data

This work arose out of two literature reviews we conducted in 2018 and 2020 (Burgess, unpublished report) on perspectives to South-South collaboration within Africa in the literature on capacity-building and collaboration in health research. This found that references to South-South intra-African collaboration were relatively rare, with most of the literature focusing on North-South collaborations. Furthermore, these reviews showed that only a very small portion of the literature took into account the views of the scientists themselves on these collaborations. Consequently, we set out to carry out interviews with African researchers with the aim of characterising their collaborations, in particular intra-African ones, and gaining their perspectives on these. We were particularly interested to study these collaborations in the context of a capacity-building initiative to determine the impact of these collaborations on capacity building, so we contacted researchers working under the DELTAS capacity-building initiative, one of the largest capacity-building programmes operating on the continent and one that has as one of its stated aims to encourage scientific mentorship and collaboration. DELTAS funds 11 programmes across the continent and we interviewed researchers from six of these: MARCAD, Afrique-One Aspire, Kemri-IDeAl, WACCBIP, MUII plus and Santhe , providing perspectives from a range of different contexts. Researchers from the programmes who focused primarily on laboratory rather than clinical research were identified from the programme websites and contacted via email. 15 scientists were interviewed, comprising four principal investigators, five postdoctoral researchers and six PhD students. This was to some extent a selective sample, as those who agreed to participate may be those who are more likely to have an interest in collaboration, thus we might expect that they might experience more collaboration than average.<br>Prior to the interview, researchers were asked to complete a short questionnaire on the frequency with which they experience different interactions such as meetings, training, mentorship and collaborations. 13 of the 15 researchers completed this survey. In the interview, researchers occasionally recalled collaborations that they had not at the time of the questionnaire, thus the interview appeared to give more complete information. The study was approved through the University of Sussex Business School ethical review process (ER/HEB35/1). <br>This dataset contains the raw questionnaire data on the collaborations and meetings that researchers participate in.The first table shows the percentage of their work time that each researcher spends on different types of collaboration. The second table shows how frequently researchers attend particular types of meetings.<br>Please contact Heather Burgess ([e-mail]) to discuss access to further anonymised questionnaire and interview data. Access may be subject tofurther ethical review or reconsent of the participants. When using the findings and data of this study, the small andselective sample should be born in mind; these give an overview of the interactions experienced bythis particular group of researchers and the ability to extrapolate to the general population ofresearchers may be limited.<br>