UK Standards for Public Involvement - Better public involvement for better health and social care research
- The UK Standards for Public Involvement are designed to improve the quality and consistency of Public Involvement in research.
- The six standards provide clear, concise statements of effective public involvement against which improvement can be assessed. They encourage approaches and behaviours that are the hallmark of good public involvement such as flexibility, sharing and learning and respect for each other.
- The standards are a description of what good public involvement looks like and are designed to encourage self-reflection and learning. They are not designed as rules, or to provide fixed ideas about public involvement - they can be used with any method or approach to involvement in research
- The standards were developed over a three year period by a UK-wide partnership, which brought together members of the public with representatives from the National Institute for Health and Care Research (England), the Chief Scientist Office (Scotland), Health and Care Research Wales and the Public Health Agency (Northern Ireland), working with an independent expert.
- More than 40 organisations, groups and individuals across the UK used the Standards during a year-long piloting phase and were overwhelmingly positive about their experience of implementing them. The pilots used the standards in different ways, including as a framework to support reflective practice and future plans for public involvement activities.
- The Northern Ireland Cerebral Palsy Register (NICPR) team at Queen’s University Belfast piloted the Standards and have enhanced the level of public involvement in their research; providing access to training for public involvement group members, improving communication and dissemination of information and embedding public involvement across the research life cycle.
Helen Savage, NICPR public representative on the Standards project, commented that public involvement “can contribute to high quality research to improve the lives of people with cerebral palsy, now, and in the future.”
For more information, please visit the UK Standards for Public Involvement website.
To download the standards click on the relevant link below:
Useful Resources
- UK Standards for Public Involvement: Resources to support researchers working towards the UK standards
- Slide set on the UK Standards for Public Involvement produced by the four nations
- UK Standards for Public Involvement Implementation Stories: These experiences, or stories, show different ways the standards were implemented and integrated into research and research-related projects.
- Health and Social Care Research Wales: UK Standards for Public Involvement one hour training package
- Public Involvement in Research Impact Toolkit (PIRIT): this consists of a planning tool and a tool to track the impact of public involvement activities within your research. The PIRIT Planning Tool is a checklist of potential public involvement related activities and relevant standards. The format follows the research pathway. The PIRIT Tracking Tool is a simple spreadsheet to record when and how the public contributed, what they hoped to influence, what changed (if anything), why it matters, and the related standards.