How To Guides

Here you can find a series of ‘How To‘ guides that help people navigate the sometimes complex journey from agreeing with a general principle that patients and the public should be involved in coproducing health research involvement to actually making it happen in practice. You may also want to check out these further practical resources for involving people in research.

Active citizens

• How to meet legal obligations in your public consultation and summary
• How to engage seldom heard groups
• How to identify your skills for involvement
• How to involve the public as Board members and summary.
• How to involve the public on staff appointment panels and summary.
• How to engage the public in scrutiny and summary
• How to respond to vexatious behaviour
• How to do reverse mentoring

Life beyond research

• Experience pays – how to make money from your lived experience
• How to take your lived experience to work
• Capability Adjusted – how to make reasonable adjustments to capability management
• How to win a prize for your Public Contribution
• How to decide whether to support public involvement in commercial projects
• How to establish a policy on whether to offer a company email address to public contributors

Ethical research practice

• How to avoid doing bad research
• How to navigate research ethics – definitions, history, systems and sanctions
• How to gain informed consent
• How to make the case that Public Contributors are Citizen Ethicists
• How to engage Public Contributors as Citizen Ethicists

Planning and delivering research

• How to form a risk register for patient and public involvement in research
• How to form a Consent to Approach register (headlines)
• How to form a Consent to Approach register (technical details)
• How to run an online meeting (NIHR)
• How to engage people as research co-applicants – the Official One from NIHR CED, one from the R&D Forum and My own
• How to write the PPI words in your research bid and summary
• There is a whole section on money on the practical resources page
• How to give feedback to public contributors (Mathie et al 2018)
• How to manage overlapping roles in research

Collecting research data

• How to get approval for Public Contributors to interview NHS patients for NIHR-funded research.
• How to co-facilitate a focus group
• How to involve people as research co-interviewers
• How to respond to distress
• How to create an effective questionnaire by NHS England
• How to conduct research with people unable to give consent by BPS

Reading and writing

• How to get a copy of an academic paper
• How to involve the public as co-authors (long version) and summary
• How to write in plain English
• PFMD on How to write a Plain English Summary
• How to review the extent of public involvement in a research study
• How to structure your report on public involvement in a research project

Facilitating learning

• How to engage the public as lecturers
• How to give a lecture to a diverse audience
• How to choose between an actor and an expert by experience
• How to choose between digital stories and live presentations
• How to train the public for involvement and summary
• How to honour storytellers