Each study has an expert advisory panel including patients, health professionals and researchers with a special interest in the condition or topic being covered. The advisory panels are very important to the projects, and play a key role in ensuring we produce high quality research-based information. They provide advice to the researcher throughout the project, help us to ensure that we interview an appropriate range of people and have included all of the main treatments and perspectives, check that the material we write is clinically accurate, sensitive and accessible to a lay audience, and promote the project in their own spheres. (See ‘credits’ section on each module for a list of the advisory panel members for the project).

Before the researchers start interviewing, they read published books and papers on the subject to help identify issues for the interviews and to find out what sorts of people we need to include in the study. Their reading includes up-date reviews of clinical evidence on the particular topic as well as social science studies, and will include recommendations from the advisory panel.