Research Standards

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Please see below all points that form the standards.

1. All research must have a sound aim and demonstrate a clear link to strategy, policy, practice or developing new knowledge.
2. The quality of design, implementation and analysis of research must be reviewed independently through the Research Governance Coordinator to ensure it meets ethical standards, achieves a high level of rigor and is potentially beneficial to the service user, and/or the organisation, and/or likely to generate useful new knowledge.
3. All studies must have appropriate arrangements for obtaining informed consent from research participants and all those involved in research must be aware of their legal and ethical duties in this respect. This must include a standard statement that any complaints from research participants should be made to the Complaints Manager and include the name of the manager to contact if the participant becomes upset as a result of the research.
4. Attention must be given to systems for ensuring confidentiality of personal information and to the security of these systems.
5. Participants or their representatives should be involved wherever appropriate in the design, conduct, analysis and reporting of research.
6. Researchers should respect the diversity of human culture and conditions and take full account of ethnicity, gender, disability, age, economic status and sexual orientation in the research design, undertaking and reporting.
7. Some research might involve an element of risk to those participating in it. Risk must always be kept to a minimum, be identified explicitly and explained clearly in the research application to the South West London Research Governance Consortium (SWLRGC).
8. It is essential that existing sources of evidence, especially literature searches/systematic reviews, be considered carefully prior to undertaking research. Research or consultation which duplicates other work unnecessarily or which is not of sufficient quality to contribute something useful to existing knowledge is in itself unethical.
9. Data collected in the course of research must be retained for an appropriate period to allow further analysis by the original or other research teams and to support monitoring of good research practice by regulatory and other authorities.
10. There should be free access to information both on the research being conducted and on the findings of the research, once these have been subjected to appropriate review. This information must be presented in a format understandable to the public. Reports need to be clear and take language and other needs into account.
11. All those pursuing social care research must open their work to critical review through the accepted academic and professional channels.