ArticleBMC medical education2019
Proliferation of the WReN spider, an instrument to measure health professionals' experience of research: a bibliographic study.
Article in BMC medical education, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- A qualitative systematic review and thematic synthesis exploring the impacts of clinical academic activity by healthcare professionals outside medicine.BMC health services research · 2021Pooled it
- The development and validation of the Research for Practice Tool (R4PT) for nursing and midwifery.BMC health services research · 2025Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundIn 1997 the "Wessex Research Network (WReN) Spider" was developed and validated to assess the research experience of general practice based researchers. This bibliometric study traces the use and development of this instrument over 15 years.
methodsWe performed a bibliographic search to identify all the citations of the original article since 2002.
resultsThirty one relevant papers were found. Publications were classified according to whether they used (N = 18) or cited (N = 13) the WReN Spider. The majority of these papers came from Australia (N = 18) and 10 papers focussed on the research training of Allied Health Professionals. The WReN Spider was used in 12 studies to assess baseline experience before a training intervention or to compare before and after training scores. The WReN Spider was often (N = 9) modified to additionally assess interest, confidence or interest in up-skilling in each of its 10 limbs. It was also often (N = 14) used in tandem with open ended questions to gain a more detailed understanding of people's research skills, or with additional questions focussing on the research context, culture and team. None of the papers confirmed the validation of the WReN Spider, although it was applied in contexts that differed from the one in which it was developed.
conclusionsThe WReN Spider continues to be used to measure the research experience of health care practitioners, but it is frequently enhanced with other questions to look at the wider issues of research success, including collaborators, resource and environment.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.