Welcome to the Involvement Cost Calculator
Do you need to budget for public involvement?
Please note that benefits guidance and tax legislation been subject to considerable change/reinterpretation since 2019. Any INVOLVE documents referring to the payment of involvement fees may now be out of date and are pending a review during 2020. INVOLVE’s guidance should not be substituted for professional advice, and INVOLVE accepts no liability for decisions or actions taken as a result of its guidance. You are always recommended to take your own tax, finance or legal advice.
Step 1 – use ‘Budgeting for Involvement’ to plan your budget. This guide provides practical advice on how to budget for involving patients, carers and the public in research. Included is a dummy study as a worked example to show how the process works (see section 3 of ‘Budgeting for Involvement’).
Step 2 – use the Involvement cost calculator to work the actual costs of involving people in your study.
Please note that this resource is not intended to plan for the costs associated with people taking part as research participants. See section 1.4 In ‘Budgeting for Involvement’ for more details.
Use this calculator once you know what costs you need to include in your budget.
You will need to have cookies enabled in order to properly use the cost calculator.
The most common costs associated with involvement are listed in five separate sections (see the arrow shaped tabs in the progress bar across the page). In each section there are individual cost items, for example in the Payment and reward section, the first item is ‘fees to individuals’ Press the expand button (+) to find out more about each item.
Work your way through the sections you need to get a total cost. You can navigate around the calculator using the arrow-shaped tabs at the top of the page or using the ‘Next’ and ‘Back’ buttons at the bottom of the page.
For each item you need enter in a quantity (the number you need) and a cost (each) to get a total cost for the item – examples are given in each section to help you.
Use the ‘Add notes’ option to put in any details you need next to each item – these will appear on the download and print out.
If a cost is not shown in any category you can add new rows to the form. Use the grey ‘Add your Own Item’ button.
You can view an overview of your budget in the Total section.
The calculator will not save your information. You can download or print any part of the form or the entire form using the download and Print buttons.
Please note that using the ‘Budgeting for involvement’ guide or cost calculator when applying for research grant funding will not guarantee funding will be awarded. Research funders take a number of factors into account, including value for money, when making decisions about which research to fund. As with any aspect of budgeting for research, it is important to justify the costs involved.
Find out more about how we developed this tool in About this resource