The UK Standards: Setting the scene
Introduction to the UK Standards for Public Involvement in Research
The National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), Chief Scientist Office (CSO) Scotland, Health and Care Research Wales, and the Public Health Agency Northern Ireland invites people to use the UK Standards for Public Involvement in all types of research activity. People, teams and organisations in health research often ask ‘What does good public involvement in research look like?’. High quality public involvement can make a real difference to research and healthcare, however it needs to evolve and improve over time.
The UK Standards for Public Involvement provide clear, concise statements of effective public involvement against which improvement can be assessed. The Partnership also want these standards to encourage approaches and behaviours that are the hallmark of good public involvement such as flexibility, sharing and learning and respect for each other.
It is possible that some organisations will achieve many of the standards, others may achieve a few. Success is not about meeting all the standards all the time, but about improvement over time as experienced by all the people involved.
Values and Principles of Public Involvement
The standards are based on initial work in values and principles of public involvement undertaken by NIHR INVOLVE and Health and Care Research Wales. Examples of public involvement standards used in different settings were collected and reviewed as part of developing these standards. All of these examples are available from the background section of this website.
The standards are:
A framework for what good public involvement in research looks like and are adaptable to different situations;
Designed to encourage reflection and learning, including where lessons have been learned when public involvement has failed to lead to expected outcomes;
A tool to help people and organisations identify what they are doing well, and what needs improving;
Intended to be used with any method or approach to public involvement in research.
Standard users could start by reflecting on where they are in their public involvement, to help manage expectations, for example;
First Steps – for those new to public involvement in research;
Everyday practice – established public involvement groups or infrastructure;
Aiming high – established and experienced groups and people, trying out new approaches.
Using the Standards
The standards can be used in different ways. Members of the public and community groups can use the standards to assess the strengths and weaknesses of their involvement in research, and identify improvements. Researchers can use the standards to review their plans for public involvement. Research funders and charities can use them to assess how public involvement is being implemented in projects and organisations they support.
Between May 2018 and May 2019 forty different ‘pilot’ organisations and people used the standards and reported back to the partnership. The feedback has been very helpful in understanding how the standards can be used and what needed to change to make them more useful.