Expression of Interest

Dr Katie Maras and Dr Ralph Bagnall (University of Bath)

Professor Laura Crane (University of Birmingham)

Dr Michelle Mattison (University of Chester)

This information sheet forms part of the process of informed consent. It should tell you what the research is about and what taking part will involve. Please read this information sheet carefully and ask the research team named above if you have any questions.

Autistic people have described stress and difficulty understanding court proceedings, and the importance of clear guidance before getting to court. Professionals across the justice system also often report a lack of training and/or knowledge of autism.

In an earlier part of this project, we co-designed court guidance resources for autistic court-users and justice professionals, with members of the autistic community and justice profession. The guidance resources are now freely available online. We are now seeking feedback from justice professionals who have read this online guidance and worked with an autistic court-user.

People who:

* By concluded we mean that, as far as you are aware, the Magistrates’ Court or Crown Court case with an autistic court-user has ended and there are no further hearings, trial dates, sentencing hearings, or expected court participation relating to that case. If you are not sure whether the case has concluded, please do not complete the expression-of-interest form yet.

We particularly welcome participants from an ethnic minority, as these groups are currently underrepresented in autism research.

It is completely up to you to decide if you would like to take part or not. Before you decide, please read the information in this sheet carefully and ask any questions you may have. If you agree to take part, you will be asked to sign a consent form. However, if at any time you decide you no longer wish to take part in this project, you are free to withdraw without giving a reason.

Contributors can choose whether to take part in an online survey or an online interview about if/how the guidance materials helped, or would have helped, when they went to court.

First, potential contributors will complete a short expression of interest form, including:

The research team will review all expressions of interest and contact suitable contributors with either a survey link or invitation to online interview (via Teams)

During the survey or interview, contributors will be asked to:

Contributors who take part in an interview or survey will be reimbursed £12.50 in appreciation for their time. Please note that if you complete the expression of interest and are not invited to take part, you won’t be reimbursed.

This research is completely separate from the court system and from any legal proceedings, and taking part will not affect your professional standing, or relationship with any professional body, organisation, or research partner.

The contributions that are provided in this project will help us to evaluate our court guidance materials for justice professionals. We hope that this information will help to improve court processes for autistic people and the professionals who work with them.

Contributors will be asked to provide ratings and written or verbal responses on the relevance and helpfulness of the online guidance, and if/how it impacted their practice with autistic court users. We will ask contributors to describe court cases broadly in terms of court processes, and the contributors’ practice with the autistic court-user.

If you take part, please do not provide any identifying information about the concluded case – including case numbers, court names, dates, locations, names of defendants, victims, witnesses, or professionals, detailed offence information, legal advice, or anything else that could identify a person or case.

We do not expect that this study should cause any discomfort or distress. However, if you think that contributing to the project is likely to cause you distress, it may be better if you don’t take part.

Only members of the research team who need access will see your personal information. If you consent, a trusted transcription company may also access your audio recording under a confidentiality and data-sharing agreement. Research collaborators will only receive anonymised data.

If you consent to your anonymised data being shared, your anonymous survey or interview responses will be stored in a data archive for other researchers to access (see Section 9).
 

If you take part in an interview on MS Teams, the interview will be video-audio recorded. This video recording will then be converted to audio only and the video recording will be deleted. After interview is transcribed, the audio recording will also be deleted. You will be given the choice of whether you consent to your interview audio recording being transcribed by a trusted external transcription company who will delete the audio recording after transcription (a confidentiality agreement will be in place). You are free to not consent to this, and in which case the research team will use the automatic transcription service in the online interview platform (e.g., MS Teams) and then review this transcription manually.

We will treat all information that you provide as confidential and store it securely at the University of Bath in a locked room or on a password-protected file on the University’s secure server. Storage of data will be done in accordance with current UK data protection legislation. Recorded data will be stored securely and confidentially in the University archives for a minimum of 10 years. Your name or any other identifying information will not be disclosed in any presentation or publication of the research.

The study is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). According to ESRC policy, anonymised data from research that ESRC funds must be made available for re-use or archiving with the ESRC data service providers.

Once this project is completed, other researchers may conduct related research projects which would benefit from using the anonymised data that you provide. Anonymised data refers to a set of data in which no single participant can be identified – for example by not including participants’ names, dates of birth, addresses etc. No individual will be identifiable in this data set.

Further use of your data will only occur with your consent. Data will continue to be stored in accordance with current UK data protection legislation. Your name or any other identifying information will not be disclosed in any presentation or publication of the research.

This project has been given a favourable ethics opinion by the University of Bath, Social Science Research Ethics Committee [reference: 16851-21362].

You can choose to withdraw from the project for up to two weeks after participation by emailing the research team at [email protected] from the email address you used to take part and requesting that your data is withdrawn. After two weeks, the data will be anonymised, and we will not be able to identify your data in order to withdraw it.

The University of Bath privacy notice can be found here: https://www.bath.ac.uk/corporate-information/university-of-bath-privacy-notice-for-research-participants/.

If you have a concern about any aspect of the project, you should ask to speak to the researchers who will do their best to answer any questions. If they are unable to resolve your concern or you wish to make a complaint regarding the project, please contact the Social Science Research Ethics Committee at [email protected]

Thank you for your interest in this project. Please do not hesitate to contact the research team at [email protected] if you would like more information.