Tips for developing communications to recruit public and community research participants

Meaningful public and patient engagement is the cornerstone of all good research. Research can only be effective if it involves the people, groups and communities who are affected by, or who have lived experience of, your area of research.

However, recruitment of participants can sometimes be a challenge for researchers – where do we start? How do we reach the groups we want to talk to? How can we get their interest and encourage them to get involved?

This session aims to offer an overview of how a well-planned communication approach can help you to reach the people and groups you want to engage with.

It will offer an introduction to the key principles of effective communications and offer tips on how to develop audience-appropriate communications to reach research participants.

This session is aimed at researchers. It will cover the basics of a good communications approach and include examples of good (and not so good) practice.

 

The session is co-led by Nicola Weatherburn, Communications Manager for the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) North East and North Cumbria (NENC) and Chris Lloyd, who is an experienced public contributor to research at a local and national level.