BMJ publishes guidance for reporting involvement of patients and the public

A new paper out this month in the British Medical Journal, and the journal Research Involvement and Engagement highlights the importance of including public involvement activities in research publications and presents new guidelines for reporting activities in publications, known as 'Guidance for Reporting Involvement of Patients and the Public' (GRIPP2).

From the Paper’s Lay Summary:

Patient and public involvement in health and social care research is increasingly important, helping to ensure that the research focuses on issues relevant to patients and the public. A wide variety of research papers with public involvement has been published over the past decade, yet many of these papers give little information about how members of the public were involved and what the result of this involvement was. This means that learning from these studies is limited. Working closely with patients and the public, we have developed guidance for people writing about public involvement to suggest what details to report. We carried out a thorough assessment of studies in this area and used a Delphi survey to ask 143 people who are knowledgeable about this topic for their opinions about what should be included in the guidance. The Delphi method consists of a series of questionnaires over a specific time period to find out whether there is agreement among experts about the topic under discussion. We found strong agreement on a number of issues to include in the guidance from the 112 people who completed three rounds of Delphi questionnaires. We also held a one-day meeting to find out whether any additional issues for which we hadn’t reached agreement should be included in the guidance. As a result of this three stage project, we developed two versions of the guidance, a short version of the guidance (GRIPP2-SF), which can be used when reporting public involvement in any study, and a long version (GRIPP2- LF) to use when the study is mainly about public involvement in research. Our aim in developing this guidance is to promote good quality reporting of public involvement, to inform good practice and create effective public involvement.

You can access both the Short-Form an Long-Form guidance on the SPCR resources hub.

For further advice on conducting and reporting involvement activities, contact your local Involvement Coordinator.