Health Research Authority (HRA) Public Consultation for Think Ethics Programme

The Supplier will deliver a public engagement project using a deliberative approach to help inform our Ethics Review Programme (known publicly as Think Ethics) and shape policy development. The work will seek to explore the different values and concerns at play when people weigh up different scenarios, recognise trade-offs between risks and benefits, and express expectations and concerns about participating in a research study.

The purpose of this work is for the HRA to get an understanding of what people know about research ethics review and through a deliberative approach, what people:

perceive to be the value of ethics review and the role of RECs

think should be the focus/nature of ethics review

consider to be important categories that should be considered by RECs

The aim is for the outcome of this work to feed into our Ethics Review Programme, in particular the following projects:

'Method of Review' project, which explores how different pathways of ethics review could be used to ensure that health and social care research studies are reviewed in the right way. We will consider whether some research could be reviewed in a more 'light touch' way, potentially by researchers themselves. The aim is to focus REC members' time and expertise where they add most value, reduce the number of studies going to full REC meetings and enable studies with few ethical issues to be reviewed in a more simplified, less resource-intensive way.

'Streamlining REC Documentation' project, which aims to modify questions in our application form and reduce the volume of information to REC members to allow them to focus their time most effectively on ethical issues.

'Decision Making and Committee Culture' project, which aims to improve consistency in the way decisions are made by RECs across the UK, in part through a review of the Lead Reviewer Form (Table 1) used by RECs.

'Information and consent' project, which aims to improve public involvement in the development of information for study participants and focus ethics review on what matters to those participants.