In the Autumn of 2023, the EDGI UK team conducted a Participant Involvement activity to understand motivators to recruitment from groups that are underrepresented in EDGI UK. These underrepresented groups include men and people from Black or South Asian backgrounds. Participants who had signed up the EDGI UK PPI Panel were sent an email asking for their responses to a short survey but only a member of one or more of these underrepresented communities could take part. We recruited 6 people into this activity.

We wanted to understand what motivated our existing participants to take part, so we asked questions regarding why participants took part, how they heard about the study, questions about EDGI UK’s online presence, and their experiences of being part of the study. Their feedback included:

• The majority of participants taking part in EDGI UK did so because they wanted to help others (thank you!).
• Half of the panel had seen EDGI UK social media adverts, and those that had, found them helpful for recruitment and promoting trust in EDGI.
• Participants mainly favoured the content used in the adverts, and one participant noted how gender neutral our adverts are compared to other eating disorder organisations.
• Participants like our social media pages, again favouring content used and the tone of posts, however South Asian communities did not report seeing EDGI UK social media pages.
• Some groups did not feel comfortable telling their social support networks about their participation in EDGI UK, particularly men.
• 100% of the panel fully or somewhat enjoyed taking part in EDGI UK, however men overall rated their enjoyment of participation as less.
• 100% of the panel felt that EDGI UK was from very valuable to neutrally valuable in terms of research value.

What can we learn from this activity?

• EDGI UK participants are helpful people and willing to do things for the benefit of others.
• Social media is successful at reaching some groups, but other methods need to be explored for those who do not regularly or ever use social media.
• We can do a deep dive into what is working with our adverts and make similar advert copies to reach new people.
• Work with male groups to learn about barriers to participation and enhancing enjoyment of participating.
• Reinforce the scientific value of EDGI UK in our communications so that everyone feels and understands the value of the project, for now and the future.

We aim to update our PPI panel list every summer. If you would like to be added to the PPI panel, please email edgi@kcl.ac.uk with the subject "PPI panel", and a few keywords about the skills or experience you have to offer. If you would like to opt out of the PPI panel, please email the same email address with the subject line “PPI Panel Opt Out” and we will action this for you.