Tell us about your experiences with clinical coaching

• This project is being led by a research team at The Healthcare Improvement Studies Institute (THIS Institute) at the University of Cambridge and Lane Clarke & Peacock (a research consultancy) on behalf of UCL Partners (a health innovation partnership) and Health Navigator, who deliver clinical coaching.
• The project will be hosted on Thiscovery, a secure online platform that supports the health and care system to work together to make services better. Thiscovery is an independent company that was created as part of a collaboration between THIS Institute and The Health Foundation. Thiscovery is running this project for The Healthcare Improvement Studies Institute (THIS Institute) at the University of Cambridge.

How do I take part?

• This project involves completing surveys at four times: before your first coaching session, and then at 3, 6 and 12 months after the first session.
• To take part, you will need to confirm that you are getting clinical coaching from Health Navigator and complete an online consent form. A copy of your consent form will be emailed to you.
• In all the surveys, you will be asked questions about your health and health-related thoughts and behaviours. In some of the surveys you will also be asked about:
  • Your background, including your age, gender, ethnicity, employment and education. These help us understand whether specific groups of people are more likely to complete the survey and have different experiences of the clinical coaching programme.
  • Your experiences of the service and whether you would recommend the service to others.
  • Your phone number and postcode. Health Navigator will only use this information to make sure they can match your responses to the services they provide you. This information will not be shared with THIS Institute at the University of Cambridge.
• Information collected about you by Health Navigator may also be securely shared with THIS Institute, University of Cambridge for their independent evaluation of clinical coaching. It will be shared in an anonymised format (removal of details which would identify you). Only information essential for the evaluation will be shared, such as the number of coaching sessions you received.

Do I have to answer all the questions?

• You do not have to answer all the questions, but we hope you will answer as many as you can. This will give us the best information about your views and experience.

How much time will it take?

• Each online survey is expected to take about 15 minutes, but you can take as much time as you need.

Can I take a break part way through answering questions?

• Yes of course. You do not have to answer all the questions in one go.
• You do not have to complete the survey all at once. If you need to take a break, please keep your survey window open so you can continue where you left off. Your access link will time out after 60 minutes of inactivity. This means you will need to click the link again to continue the survey.

Can I ask for help to complete the questions?

• Please do feel free to ask someone to help you with Thiscovery or answer the questions. This could be a family member or friend.
• If you ask for help, please answer the questions from your own point of view, and not the person helping.
• If you're new to using Thiscovery, you can find information about getting started on Thiscovery's help page.
• If you have a technical problem, please contact help@thiscovery.org for support.

What if I want to stop taking part?

• If you change your mind, you can withdraw from the project at any time without giving a reason. However, we may not be able to remove data that have already been submitted. To withdraw from the project please email help@thiscovery.org.

What are the possible benefits of taking part?

• By taking part in this study, you can share your experiences of the new service and whether it is impacting your health, thoughts and behaviours over time. These insights can help us understand and improve the service in the future.

Are there any disadvantages or risks of taking part?

• We do not believe there are any risks in taking part. However, answering questions about your health can be difficult. You do not have to answer any questions you do not want to and can stop at any time. If you find taking part in this project distressing in any way, please get in touch with Katie Richards at AICC@thisinstitute.cam.ac.uk.

What happens to my answers?

• Your answers will be analysed with the answers from everyone else to understand people’s experiences and how the service impacts health. This will help us see what works well and where we can improve.
• Your feedback and the project’s findings may be published in reports, journals, websites and through social and traditional media. Nobody will be able to identify you from any published feedback or findings. Any quotes used will be anonymous (any personal information that could identify you is removed).

How can I learn about the findings of the project?

• You will have the opportunity to let us know if you’d like to hear about the findings at the end of the first survey. These will be emailed to you.

Data security   

• Your right to privacy is important to Thiscovery and to the project team. 
• Thiscovery takes the security of your information seriously and has policies and processes in place to ensure that your data is safe. 
• Thiscovery’s privacy policy describes the way information is collected, used and protected. 
• For specific information about how information will be used in this project, please see below. 

Who is responsible for collecting my information?  

• Thiscovery is collecting information about you on behalf of The Healthcare Improvement Studies Institute (THIS Institute) at the University of Cambridge and Health Navigator for the purposes of the project.
• The University of Cambridge and Health Navigator are joint Data Controllers. They are responsible for making sure the personal information is kept secure, confidential and used only in the way you have been told it will be used. They are supported in this by Thiscovery who are known as data processors for this project.

What information will you collect about me?   

• Thiscovery will need to collect your name and email address when you sign up to take part in the project.
• To take part in the project, the project team will need to collect information that could identify you, called “personal identifiable information”. They will need to use the following information from you for this project:   
  • Your answers to questions; some of the information that you provide might be considered as health data or other data that would be classed as Special Category data under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR). 
  • Your phone number and postcode. This information will only be used by Health Navigator to identify and match you to the services they provide.
  • Optional information about your age, gender identity, ethnicity, employment status and education. 
  • Your name and email address provided - this will be used by Thiscovery to send you invites to the follow-up surveys. Health Navigator will also use this information to match you to the services they provide.

What is your lawful basis for processing my personal information?   

• Thiscovery is collecting and storing this personal identifiable information on behalf of The University of Cambridge and Health Navigator, in accordance with UK data protection laws which protect your rights. These state there must be a lawful basis (specific reason) for collecting your data.
• The University of Cambridge and Health Navigator each decide how to legally use your personal information for the project (lawful basis). For this project, the collection of the personal identifiable information is done on the basis of:
  • “a process necessary for research purposes” and “legitimate interest” for Health Navigator
  • “a process necessary for research purposes” and “public interest” for the University of Cambridge.

How will my personal information be looked after?   

Your data will be looked after in the following way.

• For this project, you need to provide your name and email address. You can read about how this information is managed in Thiscovery’s privacy policy.
• Unfortunately, if you do not provide your name and email address you will not be able to take part in this project.
• Thiscovery keeps your name and email address in a different place from any answers you provide as part of this project.
• In the project dataset we will use an ID number, rather than your name and email to identify your responses. This is called pseudonymisation.  
• The project team at THIS Institute, University of Cambridge will use all survey responses in a pseudonymised format (removal of details which would identify you) to evaluate the clinical coaching programme. This data may contain personal information like your age, gender and education.
• Health Navigator will use some of the information from this survey to see how well their clinical coaching programme is working and whether they need to change anything to make it better. To do this, they will need to be able to identify your responses by using your name and other information, including your phone number and postcode. Health Navigator will only use this information to identify you so they can match your survey responses to the services they provide you.
• Information collected about you by Health Navigator may also be securely shared with THIS Institute, University of Cambridge for their independent evaluation of clinical coaching. It will be shared in an anonymised format (removal of details which would identify you). Only information essential for the evaluation will be shared, such as the number of coaching sessions you received.
• Thiscovery uses technical and organisational measures to keep your information secure, accurate and up to date. We will only keep your information for as long as needed.
• Thiscovery uses appropriate security measures to protect your personal information, but sending information over the internet is never completely secure. Thiscovery does its best to protect your personal information but cannot guarantee its safety, so sending information to the website is at your own risk.
• Further information on how Thiscovery will uses your personal information, and how to manage your Thiscovery account, is available in Thiscovery's privacy policy.  

Will my personal information ever be shared?   

• Thiscovery will never share personal information in any way not described in this participation information or in Thiscovery's privacy policy.   
• Occasionally information provided within a project may be useful to better understand how to conduct online research or to create and improve approaches to collecting and analysing data.
• In this study, the questions used in the survey are licensed (giving us official permission to use them) to the project team by EuroQol and Insignia Health. As part of these licenses, they may request an anonymised dataset to allow them to continually improve their questionnaires and services. You would not be identifiable from this dataset, and they will not alter, share or publish your data.
• If you agree to take part in this project, Thiscovery may use some of the information gathered from you to improve the methods Thiscovery uses. If Thiscovery needs to share information with external researchers or analysts, all information will be fully anonymised.  
• By anonymised, that means Thiscovery will:
  • remove the ID number used to link your answers to your name and/or email (if provided),
  • locate and remove any other identifying information (for example, names of NHS Trusts, place names),
  • locate and remove any other indirect identifying information (such as specific details about health or experiences).

How long will my personal information and identifiable responses be held?   

• Thiscovery, the University of Cambridge and Health Navigator will only keep personal data as long as necessary for the purpose or purposes for which they were collected. For this project, this means that once the project team have finished all analyses and produced all the outputs. Once the project is finished, all organisations will take all reasonable steps to destroy, or erase all data that are no longer required.
  

What if I have a complaint or concern?   

• For questions or concerns about anything to do with the project or for technical problems or questions about the platform, please contact the Thiscovery team at help@thiscovery.org.   

How can I find out more about how my personal data is used?   

• The University of Cambridge’s Medical School privacy notice and Health Navigator’s privacy notice describes how they use personal data and explains how you can contact them. They will protect your information in line with the requirements of the UK Data Protection Act 2018. 
• Thiscovery's privacy policy describes how Thiscovery uses personal data and protects your information.

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