Fair trials: why inclusive research is key to fairer futures

Blog posts

15 Sep 2025

Dr Alexandra Nancarrow, Research Fellow 
Dr Susie Bamford, Principal Research Fellow

When research trials draw from the same, generally privileged pools of individuals, such as those with qualifications above GCSEs, we risk building an evidence base that overlooks the communities that policy changes need to impact the most. Many trials rely on people who are the easiest to reach, which often means that they are not those who are the most affected. There is a cost to ‘convenience sampling’, especially for people from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Social mobility has been an increasingly integral part of policy and reform in the UK, tracing back to the post-war Welfare State from the 1940s to the 1960s. However, it was not until the 1990s to 2000s when we saw more use of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) and longitudinal data in social research, prompting questions about who participates in research, and who exactly benefits. The establishment of the Equality Act in 2010 then pushed attention to protected characteristics.

Today, aiming for socially equitable participation in research trials continues to generate interest not only for those conducting social research, but also the UK government. At the start of 2025, the House of Lords Select Committee on Social Mobility Policy was appointed and has since published a call for evidence, with the aim of enhancing the integration of education and work opportunities to improve social mobility. With an interest in hearing from a range of individuals, including employers, education providers, local authorities, charities, community organisations and the general public, the call for evidence broadly touches on the following:

• How to define ‘social mobility’ and any associated measurements and data.
• Support from educational providers for 16-18-year-olds in the transition into the labour market.
• Work to support research on the transition from education to work by partnerships among schools, FE colleges, local government, charities and employers.
• Work related to helping those who are not in education, employment or training (NEET) enter the labour market.

These initiatives highlight the importance of social mobility and fair research participation in both social science research and government policies. Michael Sanders, Director of the School for Government at King’s College London, along with Dimitris Vallis, Research Associate at King’s College London, published a blog earlier this year about the importance of considering social mobility in the design of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) within higher education (HE). They also published a further blog highlighting how inequality still remains a blind spot for ‘what works’, and focused on the continuing need to better understand how interventions affect different groups differently.

Similarly, our work at the Institute for Employment Studies (IES) embraces a central theme of including underrepresented people in research projects, with an overall aim to improve social equity in the UK through evidence-based research across education, health and employment. For example, in the education sphere we have recently evaluated ELATT, the Peep Exploring Together programme and EFFective Kent, and in the employment space the Effective Transitions Fund. Here’s a snapshot of our key findings:

ELATT programme boosts engagement and positive learning attitudes among diverse Sixth Form ESOL learners:

ELATT is a training provider based in London, with adult learning that includes provision for English for speakers of other languages (ESOL), and Sixth Form ESOL provision, which includes learners from diverse backgrounds including asylum seekers, unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC) and refugees. Findings from the evaluation of ELATT indicated that Sixth Form participants engaged more with education and demonstrated more positive attitudes to learning; many of these learners had special educational needs and Education and Health Care Plans (EHCPs). These outcomes highlight the importance of designing and evaluating programmes that consider learners' diverse needs, ensuring that research contributes meaningfully to reducing educational disparities.

Inclusive STEM programme boosts confidence and curiosity among children, parents and practitioners:

The Peep Exploring Together evaluation, which IES conducted in partnership with the University of Oxford across early years settings, demonstrated how trials can foster social equity from the very start of education. Targeting families in disadvantaged communities, this STEM programme led to increases in practitioner and parent confidence and STEM knowledge and interaction skills, which led to increased child curiosity and engagement. Delivery adaptations, including online modules and flexible scheduling, helped overcome barriers faced by working parents or those with limited time, ensuring more inclusive participation. These outcomes reflect that equity-oriented trials not only include individuals who are often marginalised in early education research but also that these individuals benefit from being involved.

EEFective Kent project shows how equity-focused trialshelp disadvantaged schools boost collaboration:

The EEFective Kent project epitomises how equity driven research trials can influence systemic improvements by targeting evidence-based interventions at schools serving socioeconomically disadvantaged pupils. Working across 35% of schools in Kent, the findings demonstrated matched funding that enabled disadvantaged schools to adopt effective interventions, training that increased school capacity to use evidence and local collaboration that reinforced school-to-school learning communities. These characteristics reinforce the value of designing research trials that explicitly address structural inequities and support their translation into meaningful educational gains. 

Effective Transitions Fund demonstrates pathways to fairer employment outcomes:

IES recently evaluated the Effective Transitions Fund. This work was commissioned by the Careers and Enterprise Company (CEC), and its purpose was to link young people in England from disadvantaged backgrounds with education and skills that would help them prepare for entering the labour market. Theory-informed pre- and post-evaluation of the Effective Transitions Fund established that this disadvantaged group of young people could be supported to see the same sort of rate of progression and retention in post-16 employment as overall for the year group, which has the potential to deliver better social equity in future outcomes.

Recommendations for moving forward

In order to increase social inclusion in research trials, interventions that purposefully include samples from disadvantaged populations need to be evaluated. The risk of rolling out interventions that benefit advantaged individuals more so than their disadvantaged counterparts increases if research samples are not representative of the overall population, and if subgroup analyses are not included. This ultimately increases the disadvantage gap. The following recommendations aim to help address this gap, leading to more inclusive research trials.

Research transparency and freely accessible statistics

Although some organisations keep records of evaluation outcome data, such as the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) evaluation data archive, more general and easily accessible publications of aggregated, non-identifiable summary data on trial participants would enhance the transparency behind evaluations and improve our current knowledge of who exactly is participating in research. This could take shape as a ‘what works’ archive for the UK, with outcomes linking to administrative data. Funders and evaluators of social science evaluations could then potentially address any participatory gaps. Commissioners and funders of evaluations have the potential to assess and report on how well participant samples reflect target populations, for example by developing and publishing RAG ratings on sampling.

Involving underrepresented communities in research design

To improve upon representation in research, studies could start from a co-design perspective including people from underrepresented groups, such as low-income families, refugees, neurodivergent people, disabled people and ethnic minorities, as partners in the shaping of research goals, research questions, methodology, recruitment strategies and dissemination of findings.

The co-design method does not have to be complicated; examples include working with community organisations to test recruitment materials and inviting those with lived experience to serve on advisory boards. The co-design process can help to ensure that research is relevant and respectful, often resulting in richer, more meaningful data.

National guidelines on inclusive participation in evaluations

Although some steps have been made to emphasise the importance of inclusive participation in evaluations, such as the NIHR’s INCLUDE framework offering guidance on clinical trials, there has yet to be a parallel developed for evaluations in social science. The development of a shared benchmark across social science for the precise meaning of ‘inclusive participation’ makes it easier to identify gaps in this area. A first step would be for organisations to develop national guidelines on inclusive participation in research, indicating the minimum expectations for representation, accessibility and transparency in social science trials and evaluations. These guidelines would set out clear, practical standards to overcome structural barriers to participation in research, for example including reporting templates with specific guidelines for particular demographics, and inclusive recruitment strategies.

IES team and expertise  

Dr Susie Bamford leads the IES Trials Unit, with support from Dr Alexandra ‘Allie’ Nancarrow and Dr Seemanti Ghosh, and leadership oversight from Becci Newton, IES Policy Director. The members of the Trials Unit include experts from a variety of backgrounds, including those with expertise in trial design and methodology, data management, impact analysis, implementation and process evaluation and cost analysis.

The design and delivery of high-quality evaluations to help discover what works is the driving motivation behind our projects. If you are interested in learning more about the IES Trials Unit and how we could work with your organisation, please contact Dr Susie Bamford or Dr Allie Nancarrow. 

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Any views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of the Institute as a whole.