The Translational Research Impact Scale

Abstract

Increasing emphasis is being placed on measuring return on research investment and determining the true impacts of biomedical research for medical practice and population health. This article describes initial progress on development of a new standardized tool for identifying and measuring impacts across research sites. The Translational Research Impact Scale (TRIS) is intended to provide a systematic approach to assessing impact levels using a set of 72 impact indicators organized into three broad research impact domains and nine subdomains. A validation process was conducted with input from a panel of 31 experts in translational research, who met to define and standardize the measurement of research impacts using the TRIS. Testing was performed to estimate the reliability of the experts’ ratings. The reliability was found to be high (ranging from .75 to .94) in all of the domains and most of the subdomains. A weighting process was performed assigning item weights to the individual indicators, so that composite scores can be derived.