Being legal, inclusive and ethical

Our work must be legal, inclusive and ethical throughout. This is particularly important when planning for Discovery, research and user engagement. We must identify and remove barriers that might prevent users from taking part in research, and make sure to do no harm to participants. 

For example, you should: 

• Make sure that disabled people can take part in user research 
• Use clear and simple language at the minimum reading age  
• Collect and process data legally and ethically 

You can use these prompts to aid your planning for legal, inclusive and ethical research planning. 

Legal 

• What steps are you taking to align your data collection, storage and processing to the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR)? 
• Do you need to carry out a Data Protection Impact Assessment? 
• Have you written your privacy notice and consent forms for your users? Check to ensure that it clearly explains:
  • What your research is about, and how the data will contribute to your research;
  • How the data will be held and processed, and how long it will be retained; 
  • Any information related to consent (including withdrawal of consent), if required; 
  • And that is it written in a way that is clear and accessible to your users. 

 For more on Data Protection, see the resources from the Information Commissioner's Office. 

Inclusive 

• How are you planning to reach those who are seldom heard, and ensuring that disabled people are fully able to engage with your research? 
• What steps have you taken to make sure that your planned communications, activities and forms accessible? For example, checking reading age, plain language, appropriate formats, arranging for access and communications support? 
• What will you need to do to communicate and engage effectively with diverse user groups? 

Hints and Tips 

If you start work on an Equality Impact Assessment at this stage, it can help you to plan for accessible research. Your research findings can then be used to further develop your Equality Impact Assessment. 

Consider co-designing research; this can be an effective way of developing inclusive research questions and activities. 

Community organisations will often have helpful advice and insight to help with your planning and recruiting participants. They may also carry out research themselves.  

Ethical 

• What process do you need to follow in your organisation (and/or your partner organisations) to gain ethical approval
• Have you developed an ethical statement and plan? How have you communicated this to your stakeholders? 
• How are you ensuring the safety (including psychological safety) of participants/colleagues, the validity of research, the transparency of activity? 

Hints and Tips 

It's important to consider ethics throughout the project. Service design projects are iterative. This can be a challenge if you are faced with ethical approval processes which expect that you have every aspect of your research planned in advance. You will need to continually update your approach, plans and potentially your documentation. 

Tools and resources