UK Standards for Public Involvement
The final UK Standards for Public Involvement, which aim to improve the quality and consistency of public involvement in research were released in November 2019
The Standards set out six areas for developing good quality public involvement. They encourage approaches and behaviours that are the hallmark of good public involvement such as flexibility, sharing and learning and respect for each other.
These guidelines can be used by members of the public, groups, researchers and research organisations as well as public involvement facilitators and can be used with any method or approach to public involvement. They include:
- Inclusive opportunities
- Working together
- Support and learning
- Communications
- Governance
- Impact
CSO was part of the UK-wide partnership that developed the Standards.
As part of the development the draft standards were piloted in ten sites across the UK including the Asthma UK Centre for applied research at the University of Edinburgh and the Palliative and End of Life Care Patient and Public Involvement Research group at the University of Glasgow. – Scottish Testbed projects
In addition to these projects the Partnership also asked for other people, groups and teams that wanted to be involved in a more informal way to register a ‘freestyle’ project. We were delighted that out of 40 registered projects 7 were based in Scotland. – Scottish Freestyler projects
Implementation Stories
Now, a new handbook has been launched sharing the experiences of these projects in implementing the standards. The stories are designed to give a glimpse of the different ways the standards were implemented and integrated into ‘business as usual’ research, or as part of special projects.
In addition to setting out the context of each project, each story provides details about how the project applied the standards, which standards they focused on, what impact the standards had on their outcomes, and reflections about public involvement more broadly.
At the University of Glasgow the standards provided a rationale for ensuring that a small group of students undergoing their PhD programmes embraced public involvement, even if they were new to this way of working. As a result of this, all these students will have a chapter or section in their PhD thesis on the role and contribution from their public involvement partner, and will also co-write a research paper with this partner for publication in a research journal.
The Asthma UK Centre for Applied Research led by the University of Edinburgh Have improved communication between researchers and lay members when requesting help and input in projects. A new form has been co-designed to allow requests to be made in an informative way using lay language that makes clear the level of commitment required. Since its introduction, response rates to requests for patient and public involvement have increased.