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Taking part in a research study

Many patients voluntarily take part in research as ‘participants’ in clinical trials or other well designed studies. These trials aim to test how good beneficial treatments might be for people.

  • Participants often have the particular health condition that the treatment aims to help. However, sometimes they can also be healthy volunteers.
  • Treatments are tested on participants in strictly controlled ways to ensure safety and clear results.
  • Most trials need many participants because they aim to find out what treatments are likely to be most helpful for the largest number of people.

If you would like more information about taking part in research as a patient in a clinical trial or other well designed studies take a look at our leaflets, 'Understanding Clinical Trials' and 'Clinical Trials: What they are and what they are not' which you can download from 'publications' in the right hand links.

To access some useful examples of patients experiences when taking part in research, you may also like to visit Healthtalkonline .

If you are interested in becoming a participant in research:

  • You could ask your GP or Consultant to consider any trials or other well designed studies that you may be eligible for
  • You could also try using the links below to search some of the registers/databases of ongoing research in the UK eg current controlled trials.

If you find that there are no current trials or well designed studies in the disease area you are interested in then the following might be of interest:

Eligibility to be on a clinical trial

Clinical trials and other well designed studies often recruit many people as participants, but they have to fit the eligibility criteria in the research design of the study.

These criteria may concern the type of disease, history, age, gender, etc, may need to be very specific and can sometimes be quite narrow. This is necessary because clinical research measures changes that are very precise and has to be carefully controlled so that the research results are as clear and informative as possible. So even though you may be interested in taking part in a trial or a well designed study, if your details do not fit these narrow criteria you would not be eligible to take part.

The 'Understanding Clinical Trials' leaflet provides more information on eligibility criteria.

Suggesting topics for research

Some organisations encourage members of the public to suggest topics for research:

Information about clinical trials and other well designed studies going on in your area:

Watch a video

Publications

  • The UK Clinical Research Collaboration has produced a booklet on 'Understanding Clinical Trials', which explains what clinical trials are and how and why they are carried out. It is designed to answer the many questions people may have when deciding whether to take part in a trial.
    Understanding clinical trials (337kb)

    The UK Clinical Research Collaboration has produced a booklet on 'Understanding Clinical Trials', which explains what clinical trials are and how and why they are carried out. It is designed to answer the many questions people may have when deciding whether to take part in a trial.

  • The UK Clinical Research Collaboration and Association of Medical Research Charities have jointly developed this leaflet which answers some of the many questions people have about clinical trials including: Why do we need to do them? Are they safe? What happens at the end of a trial?
    Clinical trials: What they are and what they are not (223kb)

    The UK Clinical Research Collaboration and Association of Medical Research Charities have jointly developed this leaflet which answers some of the many questions people have about clinical trials including: Why do we need to do them? Are they safe? What happens at the end of a trial?