Exploring Impact: public involvement in NHS, public health and social care research

A new INVOLVE report was launched on November 6th 2009 by Professor Dame Sally Davies, Director General of Research and Development at the Department of Health. This report explores the impact of public involvement through an in-depth review of published literature. It draws together a wealth of examples of how public involvement is conducted, and what difference it is making. But it also raises questions of the quality of the evidence for the impact of such involvement, revealing huge variation in how this is assessed and reported and highlighting difficulties in judging it or drawing general conclusions. However, although there is not a consistent approach to assessing impact, or describing it, the same benefits and costs are being consistently reported:

• in clinical research it was found to be of particular value in ensuring acceptability of trials, and that participants felt them to be ethical, well-designed and have relevant outcome measures
• public involvement was reported to help increase recruitment to all types of research
• public involvement was reported to be of value in qualitative research

You can find out more and download the report on the Involve website