Created on Wednesday, 12 Apr 2017. Posted in Public Involvement
Researchers are encouraged to involve the public as early as possible in the process of designing their studies, but this work is not subject to ethical review. This paper looks at ten areas where ethical issues may arise and has used them to develop a framework to help researchers and the public work ethically together in the early design stages.
This paper is an opinion piece informed by first-hand experiences of providing advice on involving the public as part of our National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Research Design Service (RDS) roles. It also builds on consultations with approximately 20 lay people and 25 researchers during public involvement workshops held in the last 3 years in the East Midlands region.