Research reporting guidelines for health research involving people who are incarcerated: The RESPECT Guidelines Project

RESPECT Guidelines is a CIHR-funded project aiming to create and disseminate a reporting checklist for health research involving people who are incarcerated as participants.

To develop the guidelines, we completed three components:

1) A review of existing guidance on conducting research in prisons and suggestions for improved research reporting in relevant systematic reviews.

2) A Delphi study in which 53 experts from 9 countries, including 16 people with lived experience of incarceration, participated in suggesting and prioritizing potential checklist items. The Delphi process (led by Jessica Gaber as part of her PhD) and evidence review combined resulted in 46 potential checklist items.

3) A Working Group with 14 members from 6 countries, including 6 people with lived experience of incarceration, who guided the project and worked iteratively to select items for reporting and to optimize phrasing for each item.

We recently finalized the items for the RESPECT Guidelines checklist, with 18 items for reporting health research involving people who are incarcerated as participants. Now we are preparing a manuscript for publication and planning knowledge dissemination. We hope that this work will be taken up by researchers and journal editors, and that it will improve research reporting and support high-quality research in this field.

Project Lead: Fiona Kouyoumdjian
Contact: Jessica Gaber (jgaber@mcmaster.ca)