In our three part blog series below we follow the research application of Dr Marianne Coleman who submitted a project for ethics review using the HRA public involvement guidance on the Integrated Research Application System (IRAS).
Our guidance aims to help our applicants better identify where they have involved the public in their research applications, by setting out how to present information on public involvement within IRAS in a way that is most useful to Research Ethics Committees (RECs).
Dr Marianne Coleman is a Research Fellow at the University of Surrey. Her research investigates eyesight and changes in the brain in people with dementia, and is funded by a Primer Fellowship Award from the charity Fight for Sight.
The Research Ethics Committee (REC) awarded Marianne’s study a favourable ethical opinion shortly after the REC meeting and commended her on her public involvement work.
To find out how our guidance made a difference to the approval of her study, we spoke to the researcher herself, a patient and carer involved in her application and the lay member of the REC that reviewed her research.
Our new public involvement guidance: a researcher's perspective
Our new public involvement guidance: a patient and carer’s perspective
In our second blog, Marianne talks to the members of the public she’s been working with, Vandra and Brian, to find out what it’s like to be involved in research.
Our new public involvement guidance: a Research Ethics Committee member's perspective
In our third and final blog, we talk to one of the lay REC members who sat on the panel that reviewed Marianne’s study. We asked Dr Alison Ledward what difference good public involvement made to Marianne’s research application.