Our NIHR-funded programme of research EACH-B aimed to uphold principles of equality, diversity and inclusivity. Our vision was to be clear, open and fair to everyone in all that we did, ensuring effective engagement with the diversity of people standing to gain from, use or enable our research outcomes.
We aimed to achieve:
- a diverse mix of people driving and contributing to our research
- inclusive attitudes and behaviours across our centre and facility, working in collaboration with our wider partner organisations
- a welcoming and enabling research environment for all
- to be known and valued as fair, open and supportive to all.
We worked hard to achieve these aims throughout the 7 years of the study. We believe that we recruited a general and representative sample of young people to the study, but data on demographic characteristics required ‘opt-in’ consent from parents and consequently shows a bias towards those of higher SES. This is disappointing and has caused us to reflect at length on the need to identify alternative means of evaluating interventions in schools.