Figure 2. Comparison of level of
acceptance and rejection of stakeholder comments
Figure 3 compares stakeholder scores on different types of guidelines
over the years as a heatmap, to avoid aggregating the data too much and
showing trends against different parameter (year, stakeholder type,
guideline class). The closer to 2, the higher the acceptance level and
the darker the green colour. A mean score close to 0, indicated by a
darker red colour, indicates a higher rejection level. Overall, academic
stakeholders have highest likelihood for acceptance in both
indication-level and general guidelines. Surprisingly, governmental
stakeholders had highest chances for acceptance for guidelines on
molecule-level. Yet, the trend shows that government comments had good
acceptance for general guidelines and the exceptionally low score in
2014 (a result of multiple guidelines with no accepted comments, i.e.
mean score 0) impacts the overall average score disproportionally. Trade
association and individual company comments are most likely to be
accepted for indication-level guidelines (mean score 1.01 and 1.12).
Comments from individual companies also were more likely to be accepted
for molecule-level guidelines than those from trade associations (mean
scores 1.01 vs 0.80), while comments from trade associations were more
likely to be accepted for general guidelines (mean scores 0.92 vs 0.80).