How will I find people to involve?

This is often a challenge for lab based researchers, as you may not have links to a relevant patient group or to a clinic. Try:

Contacting the relevant national charity

Many national charities have networks of patients and carers who want to be involved in research and who have had access to training about research and about PPI in research. If this is the case, the charity may be able to send out a request to their network. Even if this isn’t the case, you may be able to use a charity’s newsletter or website to contact people who might be interested. Charities may be able to help you in other ways too – see here for more information.

The researchers who helped to write this guidance found that this was the easiest and most effective way to find people to involve.

Contacting the PPI / patient engagement team at your university

Some PPI teams support networks of patients and carers who are interested in getting involved in research. Even if they don’t do this, they will be able to advise you about local groups that you could approach, or even help you to approach them.

Contacting a local patient support group

For example this might be a support group for people with a particular type of cancer or a long term condition. Try asking your PPI team (see above) or googling if you’re not aware of any groups.

Asking clinical colleagues for help

If your research team includes clinical colleagues, you could also ask them to help you by approaching people. Or you could ask if you can attend one of their clinics so that you could approach people in the waiting area.

Posting your involvement opportunity on appropriate websites

For example, you can post involvement opportunities on the People in Research website.

Other ideas

See this resource for more ideas.

Whichever method you choose, be ready to describe:

• Your research

• A bit about what lab based research is

• Why you want people to get involved

• Who you are looking for

• What you will be asking of them

• What the time commitment will be (e.g. a one-off meeting for two hours, a series of meetings lasting one or two hours every six months, for a period of three years, with email contact every so often in between)

You’ll need to be able to do this in plain English – both in writing and verbally. You can find more guidance about this here.

Click here for an example of an invitation email sent by PPI facilitator.