Survey Need and Importance

The AUA Office of Research strives to provide valuable, cutting-edge research resources to support and increase the workforce of urology physician-scientists and researchers with a mission to catalyze the advancement of clinical practice and reduce the burden of all urological disease through impactful research. One goal of the Research Educational Needs Assessment Survey was to identify current research competencies and identify areas of perceived need in research education amongst the AUA membership. An additional goal of this assessment survey was to gather crucial information needed to plan future initiatives for current and future urological researchers.

Survey Methodology

A panel of members drawn from the AUA Research Education, Conferences and Communication Committee (RECCC) was created to form a “Research Education Needs Working Group” that, via a modified Delphi method, developed consensus for survey content. This survey was reviewed and approved by the RECCC and distributed to the entire AUA membership via an online email link in March 2022. This survey was open for 1 month for completion (March 24, 2022-April 24, 2022). Collected data were then anonymized and analyzed by the AUA Data and Statistical Services. A total of 423 respondents participated in the survey with 147 answering at least 1 of the specific research competency questions.

Survey Findings

Respondents were predominantly <35 years of age (44.9%), male (67.3%), and White (64.6%) with most respondents from the North and South Central AUA sections (42.9%; Figure 1). A majority of respondents (63.4%) had less than 20% of their time devoted to research, with 17.3% having no protected research time (Figure 2). Only 6.2% were full-time researchers.

A block of questions assessed current research competencies in areas related to initiating research. As shown in Figure 3, most areas were noted to have large gaps in competency. However, the 4 largest areas of apparent need included clinical trial design (62.6%), knowledge of running clinical trials (60.8%), setting up a clinical research program (56.6%), and developing a patient advocacy group (46.9%; highlighted via red boxes in Figure 3). Questions regarding perceived competencies in the area of research funding identified significant broad gaps in knowledge. As shown in Figure 4, over 80% of respondents expressed a need for identifying and obtaining research funds (knowledge of funding opportunities, philanthropy, and grant application writing) as well as managing funding (budget and personnel management). Regarding research deliverables, the results were mixed with no significant percentage identifying needs with writing a manuscript (33.9%), research presentation (31.3%), or reviewing a manuscript for a journal (34.9%).

A second broad area of questions included in the needs assessment survey focused on determining awareness related to current resources provided by the AUA to support research endeavors. The AUA offers a number of online courses designed to aid early career investigators (“Writing a Successful Career Development Award Application,” “Big Data and Omics Analysis in Urology,” and “Establishing Your Independent Research Lab”). Importantly, these resources are available either free or for a nominal fee to AUA members. In addition, these courses can be utilized in a time flexible manner by participants. The AUA also offers “Data and Statistical Services” to provide comprehensive professional data analysis. As shown in Figure 5 by the yellow bars, the panel was surprised to learn that the vast majority of respondents (ranging from 47.6% to 62.6%) were not aware that these unique resources are available.

To further inform the AUA regarding potential research resources and courses/symposia as they plan to address the potential needs identified by the survey, an additional category of questions focused on identifying potential opportunities for the Office of Research to support future activities. As shown in Figure 6, a number of factors were deemed to be important for determining participant interest in future educational research activities, but the most critical were “Topic/subject matter” (with 78.6% deeming this to be extremely important), followed by 2 factors related to availability for attendance (highlighted in red boxes). Interestingly, location for such educational opportunities, as well as sponsoring organization, were areas deemed “not important.” Cost factors related to the course/meeting were identified as extremely important by 46.2% of respondents. We also found that although 66% of respondents did receive some institutional monetary support to participate in a research activity, 87.1% of respondents were more interested in attending an in-person meeting if a travel stipend was available. No meaningful preference was identified in whether a research educational activity should be provided via an online resource (21.8%) or an in-person meeting (25.2%) with most respondents being indifferent to either (53.1%). There was overwhelming support for the AUA to establish collaborative research networks (93.2% endorsing this) with the highest 3 areas respondents wished for this to be established in being fields of oncology research (Figure 7).

Future Directions

We understand the limitations of the survey based upon the small sample size related to the overall AUA membership. Potential incorporation of targeted research need questions in the annual AUA Census may increase participation and, by increasing the number of respondents, provide a more representative snapshot of the perspectives of the larger AUA membership. Despite this, this needs assessment has identified several important areas where the AUA can enhance research-related competencies. Research initiation/program setup, particularly related to clinical trials, as well as setting up a clinical research program and developing a patient advocacy group, were specific identified needs. This might be best addressed by a focused course such as the “Methods in Clinical Urology Research (MCURe) Workshop” which was previously run by the AUA and Duke University in 2021. Perhaps it would be beneficial to expand the reach of this course to capture a wider audience at different research experience levels. Research funding knowledge was another important identified need area with over 80% of respondents desiring further education/training. All aspects ranging from identifying funding and philanthropic opportunities, preparing grant applications, to managing a research budget and personnel were identified “need” areas. As a panel, we were surprised by the limited awareness and utilization of current AUA online and research courses by AUA members. We are working to analyze the reason for this and endeavoring to increase future visibility and accessibility for our members to these unique resources. Regarding crucial factors for future educational needs activities, the topic/subject remains an extremely important factor as does availability to attend. Incorporating these activities alongside well attended meetings such as the AUA Annual Meeting may be one option to optimize engagement. A strong desire for travel stipend support (87.1% respondents) was highlighted as one factor that could strengthen participation. The decision to make the activity online versus via an in-person meeting would be topic dependent. The strong desire for the AUA to establish collaborative research networks was emphatically identified by this survey and lends extra validation to the “AUA Research Incubator” concept currently being championed by Dr Kaplan and the AUA Research Council. All the research education needs areas from this survey are currently being carefully reviewed by the RECCC to ensure we can address and deliver on these educational needs identified by our membership over the next 5 years to promote and support urological research.

Acknowledgements

We thank Diana Tsuji, Julia Gumminger, Carolyn Best, Benjamin Canales, the AUA Office of Research, and the AUA Research Education, Conferences and Communications Committee for their help in conducting and analyzing this survey.