Participant Information for Interviews
Introduction
HSR UK is a registered charity and self-supporting membership organisation dedicated to the promotion of health services and social care research in policy and practice. We are currently undertaking project work funded by the Health Foundation to better understand and improve career pathways in our sector. By undertaking this work, we hope to make a tangible difference in the way people from diverse backgrounds experience research careers. As the first phase of this project, we plan to undertake a survey of health services and social care researchers.
What are these interviews for and who can take part?
These interviews aim to explore career experiences in the health services and social care research sector, from PhD students and Early Career Researchers right through to Senior Leaders and Heads of Research Centres. By carrying out this interview research, we hope to gain a better understanding of experiences and representation in our sector while also informing future interventions to improve career experiences, which forms Phase Two of the wider project work HSR UK will be undertaking.
If you are a researcher and your research activities include health services and/or social care research, we’d love to hear from you and invite you to participate!
What does taking part involve?
Taking part in an interview will take no more than 1 hour of your time. The interview can be held on Microsoft Teams or Zoom. During the interview, you will be asked questions about your career. During the interview, you will be asked questions about your career. Participation in interview and answering questions during the interview is voluntary.
What data are we collecting and how will it be used?
We will collect general data regarding your career experiences including information about your current role, employment and contract type. We’d also like to explore your experiences and
perceptions of what works well and what could be improved regarding research career journeys and development. Although we are not gathering identifiable data such as your name, we will ask questions to gather demographic information including protected characteristics such as age, marital status, sexuality, gender identity and ethnic background. We are collecting this data to better understand how inclusive research careers are in our sector and to understand whether, and how, people's demographics affect their career pathways. We will analyse your responses and we will independently write up our findings in a report that will be publicly available on our website and shared in our community.
How will we store the collected data?
The information collected in this survey will be stored securely by HSR UK with access restricted to and processed by the HSR UK team. Data will be retained for a two-year period after the project end date (currently April 2026) before being destroyed. All participant information is collected securely using Microsoft forms in the UK and subsequently transferred to our UK based IT systems hosted by the Nuffield Trust, which are accredited to the ISO 27001 information security standard. Full details of your rights and our full privacy notice is available on our website: https://hsruk.org/about/privacy-cookies.
Any concerns regarding data governance?
If you have any concerns about data privacy, please contact HSR UK directly in the first instance using the contact details below.
Further information
If you have any queries about this work, your participation or require further information, please contact Jenny Wheeldon, Project Officer at HSR UK: [email protected].
Please click the following links to access the:
HSR UK National Career Survey Participant Information Sheet (PIS)