Staying connected with your participants

This toolkit is a clear and simple communication framework to help researchers share updates with participants. 

A research communications toolkit

Results from a survey of people who had taken part in research, show that 80% of respondents would be more likely to take part in future studies if they received updates from the researchers. 

So we've developed a toolkit to make it easy for the research community to communicate with their study participants.

Co-produced with researchers and the Parkinson’s community, the toolkit is designed to keep people who've taken part updated and engaged until the research findings are published.

You can view the toolkit master guide or download individual elements below.

If you're using the toolkit for the first time, please make sure you read the full toolkit master guide to understand how and when to use each element. 

If you're revisiting the toolkit, feel free to just download the individual elements. 

Developed with the HRA and REC

This toolkit has been developed with the HRA (Health Research Authority) and RECs (Research Ethics Committees) and reflects accepted good practice for communicating with participants. 

The toolkit master guide

The toolkit has everything you need to successfully communicate with your study participants, keeping them engaged and interested in current and future research.

You'll find background information on why we made the toolkit, guidance on how to use it and links to each element in the toolkit master guide. 

Download the toolkit master guide
survey poster

Download individual toolkit elements 

Parkinson's UK branded templates as seen in the toolkit master guide:

Unbranded, black and white templates that you can apply your own brand to:

Parkinson's UK branded templates as seen in the toolkit master guide:

Unbranded, black and white templates that you can apply your own brand to:

Short Updates Examples: to help show you how to do your short updates:

Guides on communicating with your participants:

  • Poster: data from our Continuous Engagement Project, the reason for the creation of the toolkit.

Dr Thomas Payne, Clinical Fellow at Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience, said:

"It is very easy to lose touch with participants, especially once studies are in their data analysis stage, however, it is really important to continue communicating and the update and newsletter templates have made it easy to do so."   

Contact us

If you have any questions, comments or feedback about the toolkit, please get in touch with us at [email protected].