摘要：Surveying governmental public health practitioners is a critical means of collecting data about public health organizations, their staff, and their partners. A greater focus on evidence-based practices, practice-based systems research, and evaluation has resulted in practitioners consistently receiving requests to participate in myriad surveys. This can result in a substantial survey burden for practitioners and declining response rates for researchers. This is potentially damaging to practitioners and researchers as well as the field of public health more broadly. We have examined recent developments in survey research, especially issues highly relevant for public health practice. We have also proposed a process by which researchers can engage with practitioners and practitioner groups on research questions of mutual interest. Survey data have become one of the important scientific resources for making evidence-based decisions to improve the overall functioning and performance of public health departments. 1 Survey data on health departments’ infrastructure, such as finance, workforce, and programs, are similarly valuable for informing public health policy and practice. 2–5 In recent years, an increasing number of surveys have been sent to practitioners, particularly those at local health departments (LHDs) and state health agencies (SHAs). 4 Although the research may be valuable, those data collection activities collectively impose a burden on public health staff, many of whom are already overextended because of significant health department workforce reductions and turnover as a result of recent budget cuts. 6–8 According to the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO), which represents the nation’s 2800 LHDs, 40% of LHDs were asked to complete more than 5 organizational-level surveys in the previous 6 months during 2013 (NACCHO, unpublished data, 2013). Approximately 9% of these LHDs received more than 20 survey requests. Varying methodologies are employed to address barriers related to survey sampling, dissemination, and respondent follow-up, creating limitations when it comes to data comparability and replication of results. The myriad objectives, methods, successes, and failures observed among public health researchers surveying governmental staff motivated our examination. In mid-2015, the writing team, consisting of public health systems and services research scholars, began meeting regularly to create a consensus list of challenges facing researchers and public health practitioners who participate in survey research. Additionally, the group constructed a set of recommendations for those seeking to engage practitioners in research moving forward. We discuss 3 main themes: (1) what makes survey research with public health practitioners different, (2) challenges, and (3) recommendations.
