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Background: Stakeholder engagement is increasingly recognized as a key component of ethical research in leading ethics guidelines. Ethics commentators have also argued that engagement has several beneficial outcomes for the field. Aim: This paper reports on the beneficial outcomes of stakeholder engagement in HIV prevention trials as perceived by stakeholders in the field. Method: We conducted 28 interviews between 2019 and 2021 with interviewees from various stakeholder groups in 12 countries and used thematic analysis to analyze the transcripts. Findings: We found three major themes - namely emPowerment where engagement is perceived to empower stakeholders, Partnerships where engagement is perceived to build equitable relationships and Protections where engagement is perceived to strengthen protections for participants and community stakeholders and to improve science. Conclusions: These findings map closely onto beneficial outcomes envisaged by ethics guidelines, however, the relationship between outcomes seen as beneficial deserves further exploration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethics guidance recommends that researchers engage stakeholders and that RECs review research for such engagement. The ethics review process may present a unique opportunity to support stakeholder engagement practices for HIV prevention studies. We conducted 28 interviews with experts from 12 countries to explore this issue, and analyzed the data using Thematic Analysis. We found that the value of engagement and review processes was strongly endorsed. However, we identified 3 major thematic complexities, namely: "Tokenism" where processes risk being "tick-box"; "Toxicity", where practices may inadvertently have negative consequences; and "Tailoring", where processes need careful variation in intensity. We make recommendations for how these "Ts" can be addressed during the review process to help contribute to thoughtful review of meaningful stakeholder engagement in research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]