Broadening participation

Supporting interviews - teaching resource.pdf

To support researchers in creating more inclusive research approaches, Helen produced two teaching resources: Supporting Interviews and Supporting Informed Consent. These have been made available here.

Supporting informed consent - a teaching resource.pdf

An early infographic, produced for a PGR conference talk

SUPPORTING INFORMED CONSENT

There are a number of reasons why the gaining of informed consent needs to be more supported:

Any information presented regarding planned research participation needs to be clear, concise and presented in an organised manner. It also will need to be created with potential participants' communication styles/preferences in mind.

Information should be available to take home for further discussion with family, friends or carers, or to just revisit at one's own pace.

Ideally, potential participants should also get the chance to meet you and ask questions, and experience the sort of activity the research will involve. A great way to do this is to deliver a half-hour 'taster-session'.  Following these steps, people should be able to give not just informed consent, but 'experientially-informed consent'.

MAKING RESEARCH MORE ACCESSIBLE

When presenting the above infographic at an ESRC conference, Helen became aware of the gap in research practice which leads to the exclusion of learning disabled research participants. Autism journal papers are awash with limitations sections admitting this oversight.

Drawing on her years of teaching this demographic, Helen has devoted time to support fellow PhD candidates, whose focus is autism (such as Victoria Newell from the University of Nottingham) to make their research information and consent forms easier to understand, and their research processes more accessible. This has enabled them to potentially broaden participation in their research so that it is also welcoming of learning disabled participants.