sparking

The Leverhulme Trust centre considered the following criteria:
• High risk science
• Disruptive thinking
• Re-shaping a field of science
With this input and experience from the process, IPPH identified its own set of criteria or attributes
of Catalytic questions that include the following:
• Forward thinking
• Disrupt or transform current thinking and spur innovation
• Creatively challenge and address widely held assumptions
• Go beyond status quo
• Ultimately lead to better solutions
The list of catalytic questions for consideration resulted from a two stage voting process
between January and April 2016. The first step was an open online call for catalytic questions
which was available from January 19 to February 29, 2016. A total of 109 questions were
received from primarily researchers (50.9%) followed by practitioners (12.7%), policy makers
(7.3%), trainees (3.6%), citizens (3.6%), research funders (1.8%), and other (20%; advocate,
teacher, student, etc.). 89% of respondents were from Canada and the remaining 11% from
other countries. The questions were reviewed for relevance and appropriateness to the call for
catalytic questions. After removing duplicates, incomplete, unclear or non-relevant questions,
98 remained. Two senior IPPH staff independently reviewed the list of 98 catalytic questions and
identified preliminary thematic clusters for categorizing the questions. Following further
discussion and refinement, 11 thematic clusters were created (Appendix B).
The second step was an open online call for voting on the 11 priority themes and the related 98
questions within the themes. This call for online voting was available from March 30 to April 15,
2016. The respondent profile is summarized in Figure 1.