How feasible is it to evaluate the impact of public involvement in health and social research?

2008 Conference

Increasingly, members of the public are involved at all stages of the research process and in different ways. Yet little is known about the impact of public involvement.

We wanted to know if agreement could be reached by service users, researchers, research managers, policy makers and research commissioners on whether there are feasible ways of evaluating the impact of public involvement in research. There were three stages to our study:

• An Expert Workshop to generate ideas about the topic.
• A Delphi process (a method using two rounds of questionnaires), to ask people to rate the feasibility of evaluating the impact of public involvement on specific aspects of research.
• Telephone interviews with a diverse sample of Delphi participants to gain a better understanding of evaluating the impacts considered measurable by the Delphi participants.

We found strong agreement that the impact of public involvement could be evaluated for some research activities. These will be presented and discussed. We hope that people will learn more about the feasibility of evaluating the impact of public involvement from these findings.

This study benefited enormously from two advisors:

• One person giving advice from a public perspective
• Another providing advice as someone who works in the field of public involvement in research.

They assisted in developing the questionnaires, interview guide and study documents. They also helped to interpret the findings

Authors

Barber ~ Rosemary

Consultant Clinical Psychologist, Sheffield Health and Social Research Consortium; Honorary Senior Research Fellow, School of Health and Related Research, University of Sheffield. Rosemary is leading a research theme on public involvement in the School of Health and Related Research at the University of Sheffield. She is a member of INVOLVE's Working Group on Empowerment and the Medical Research Council's Public Panel.

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Boote ~ Jonathan

Jonathan Boote is Reader in Patient Experience and Public Involvement, Centre for Research in Primary and Community Care, University of Hertfordshire. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and a member of INVOLVE and the International Collaboration on Participatory Health Research.

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