Creating a professional linkage platform in adult social care
User research guide

Templates and advice


1.1 Sample and demographics

Please see the sample and demographics table for more information.

1.2 Interview objectives

Understand the extent to which gathering information about related practitioners in the adult social care context is a challenge and determine whether a Family Context style tool would support frontline practitioners in the delivery of their role.

Through this research, we seek to:

  • Test our assumptions that frontline practitioners within Hounslow, Brent, connected health settings and other LAs struggle to establish the professional network around a service user/potential service user being triaged in a timely way. 
  • Understand what information frontline practitioners from different services need to know in order for them to more quickly identify the professional network around an individual, including: 
    • Creating a prioritised list of which services they currently struggle to contact to understand their involvement
    • Finding out how much information they need to see about service involvement (i.e. will contact details be enough or is some detail around nature of involvement required)
    • Determine how frequently these lists need to be updated
    • Identify general barriers and enablers to gathering information
  • Establish the legal, cultural and operational challenges around scaling this approach beyond the prototype, with a view to building a scalable model beyond the scope of this project.

1.3 Principles of consent

All participants should be informed of the purpose of the interview in a briefing and should be given the opportunity to withdraw from the interview at any point. Regular check-in points should be provided throughout the project to give participants the opportunity to express whether or not they feel comfortable continuing.

Alongside the written consent form, which should be shared before the session, we have provided a copy of the verbal consent procedure for interviews with facilitators (and in the discussion guide). The interviewer should read this aloud.

1.4 Timing and flexibility

The interview should last one hour. It is important that you use the full hour to give the participant the opportunity to explore the topics in sufficient detail. Try not to go over the hour as your participants may have other appointments to attend. 

While the interviewer should try to cover the breadth of topics in the discussion guide, they may wish to cover some areas in greater detail than others. As such, some of the topics in the discussion guide are ‘optional’. The content of each discussion may depend on the role and experience of the participant and the interviewer should be prepared to adjust the timings outlined below. 

You can use this guide to develop your research session. It is not meant to be used as a rigid script, however, and you do not need to ask every question in the order they are presented or meet all the objectives listed under ‘Purpose of section’. Rather, you should use the questions as a guide to support your conversation with the participant, probing deeper and deviating when necessary.

The interview is a chance for you to prompt the participant to tell stories in a way that makes sense to them, rather than achieve a set of rigid objectives. Be prepared to be flexible! 

1.5 Questionnaire

You might find it useful to base your questionnaire on the one we used for our project.

1.6 Recruitment tracker

Use the recruitment tracker tables to keep track of people you’ve reached out to for recruitment.

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