Identifying aims and objectives
Thoroughly planning your involvement helps deliver a value adding experience. This page signposts to information and tools
Being clear on your aims and objectives will help when you are communicating your goals to the consumers you involve and other bodies such as funders or ethics committees. The following questions may help you to define your aims and objectives for consumer involvement:
- What problem are you trying to solve?
- How can insight from consumers help you solve this problem?
- What questions do you need to ask consumers to gather this insight?
If you are not sure where in the research cycle you may be able to involve consumers, you should review the Where to Involve webpages of this Toolkit.
Once you have a basic plan, start thinking about how you will measure if you have successfully achieved your objectives. Evaluation is important to improve your consumer involvement for your next study and also to demonstrate its impact. To do this, please visit the Evaluating Involvement webpage of this Toolkit.
The Questions to Consider document summarises common questions researchers and research organisation ask when planning their involvement activities. The worksheet, Planning Your Involvement, may also help you develop your plans and confirm whether you have considered everything you need.