Abstract:

Despite increasing knowledge of potential benefits of research utilization in improving quality of healthcare management decision (HMDs) outcomes and practice, the use of research evidence by healthcare authorities continues to be a global concern. We examined the organizational contextual predictors of research utilization in management decisions of healthcare authorities in Arua district local government. The observational cross-sectional survey design was used, involving 225 questionnaires and nine key informant interviews, and the extent of influence of organizational contests was determined by estimation of predicted probabilities, and the corresponding odds ratios and coefficients using the binary logistic regression model. The results reveal that research utilization was significantly influenced by organizational context, whose overall predicted probability was 0.001 (p<0.05), with access to library (p=0.023), performance monitoring (p=0.029), information sharing (p=0.014) and participation in formal meetings (p=0.016) being significant predictors with fairly high odds ratios. These findings highlight the combined importance of performance monitoring, sharing information (social capital), access to library and participation in formal meetings (formal interaction) as significant predictors of increased research utilization. Even-though, sharing information showed strongest positive influence, which implies that workplace measures that promote sharing of information were about four times more likely to increase research uptake.

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