• Sinead Watson, Julie McMullan, Paul Brocklehurst, Georgios Tsakos, Richard G Watt, Rebecca R Wassall, Andrea Sherriff, Sheena E Ramsay, Anup J Karki, Sayaka Tada, Caroline Lappin, Michael Donaldson, and Gerald McKenna.
• Centre for Public Health, School of Medicine, Dentistry and Biomedical Sciences, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast, UK. s.watson@qub.ac.uk.
• Trials. 2020 Jul 1; 21 (1): 599.

BackgroundOral healthcare service provision for dependent older adults is often poor. For dental services to provide more responsive and equitable care, evidence-based approaches are needed. To facilitate future research, the development and application of a core outcome set would be beneficial. The aim of this study is to develop a core outcome set for oral health services research involving dependent older adults.MethodsA multi-step process involving consensus methods and including key stakeholders will be undertaken. This will involve identifying potentially relevant outcomes through a systematic review of previous studies examining the effectiveness of strategies to prevent oral disease in dependent older adults, combined with semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders. Stakeholders will include dependent older adults, family members, carers, care-home managers, health professionals, researchers, dental commissioners and policymakers. To condense and prioritise the long list of outcomes generated by the systematic review and semi-structured interviews, a Delphi survey consisting of several rounds with key stakeholders, as mentioned above, will be undertaken. The 9-point Likert scale proposed by the GRADE Working Group will facilitate this consensus process. Following the Delphi survey, a face-to-face consensus meeting with key stakeholders will be conducted where the stakeholders will anonymously vote and decide on what outcomes should be included in the finalised core outcome set.DiscussionDeveloping a core set of outcomes that are clinically and patient-centred will help improve the design, conduct and reporting of oral health services research involving dependent older adults, and ultimately strengthen the evidence base for high-quality oral health care for dependent older adults.Trial RegistrationThe study was registered with the COMET initiative on 9 January 2018 http://www.cometinitiative.org/studies/details/1081?result=true .

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