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We’re doing an exciting piece of research – and we need your help

How you can get involved in the Q Lab's exciting (but practical) research on peer support

We are excited to announce that a survey from the Q Lab looking into what matters to people when making decisions to do with peer support, is now live!

With the help of the Q Lab participants and colleagues and working with YouGov, we’ve designed a survey for different groups of people – people working in health and care, peer support workers and the public – asking what factors they consider important when referring to, recommending or accessing peer support.

The survey will give new insights into the drivers around decision making in peer support could have a practical use for those working in peer support, as well as national bodies and charities when communicating about peer support.

To help us get as many people as possible fill in the survey, please:

  1. Complete the survey (it will take less than 10 minutes)
  2. Share the survey with 3 or more friends and colleagues (here’s a document with suggested text and tweets to help spread the word)

The survey is open until 19 January.

Even if you haven’t used, worked in or even heard of peer support before – your insights are still valuable.

Why we’re doing this survey

Since April, the Q Improvement Lab has been working on the challenge ‘what would it take for peer support to be available to everyone that wants it, to help manage their long-term health and wellbeing needs?’.

My colleague Tracy has blogged before on her reflections of there being no one single answer to this question, but there are a number of pieces of work that we – as a Lab team, 170 Lab participants and 2000 Q members – can be doing to help us make progress on making peer support more widely available.

One of those pieces of work is exploring how we can improve access to peer support; thinking in greater depth about the role health care professionals and others, including those in the voluntary sector, can play in terms of offering peer support and how to support people to take up that offer.

The power of Q

This is not a small survey; we’re aiming to get over 2,500 responses.

YouGov are helping with collating responses, however we need the help of the Q community and Lab participants.

Peer support access survey

If just a third of Q members complete the survey that’s 700 additional responses. If a third of Q members complete the survey and share with two people that’s 2100 responses. And if 90% of Q members fill in the survey and share with 3 people that’s 8400 responses!

The Q Improvement Lab is testing whether a Lab approach can help us make progress on complex challenges. Part of this approach is drawing on the collective expertise and experience of the fantastic Q community. Together we can contribute to what we think is an exciting and practical piece of peer support research.

Get involved in the survey outputs

If you’d like to be involved in shaping the outputs of the survey and sharing these throughout the health care community, please do get in touch via QLab@health.org.uk.

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