Protocol for assessing stakeholder engagement in the development and evaluation of the Informed Health Choices resources teaching secondary school students to think critically about health claims and choices.

Background As part of a five year plan (2019-2023), the Informed Health Choices Project, is developing and evaluating resources for helping secondary school students learn to think critically about health claims and choices. We will bring together key stakeholders; such as secondary school teachers and students, our main target for the IHC secondary school resources, school administrators, policy makers, curriculum development specialists and parents, to enable us gain insight about the context. Objectives To ensure that stakeholders are effectively and appropriately engaged in the design, evaluation and dissemination of the learning resources.To evaluate the extent to which stakeholders were successfully engaged. Methods Using a multi-stage stratified sampling method, we will identify a representative sample of secondary schools with varied characteristics that might modify the effects of the learning resources such as, the school location (rural, semi-urban or urban), ownership (private, public) and ICT facilities (under resourced, highly resourced). A sample of schools will be randomly selected from the schools in each stratum. We will aim to recruit a diverse sample of students and secondary school teachers from those schools. Other stakeholders will be purposively selected to ensure a diverse range of experience and expertise. Results Together with the teacher and student networks and the advisory panels, we will establish measurable success criteria that reflect the objectives of engaging stakeholders at the start of the project and evaluate the extent to which those criteria were met at the end of the project. Conclusion We aim for an increase in research uptake, improve quality and appropriateness of research results, accountability and social justice.