Participant recruitment and research ethics. The stakeholders we recruit for interviews will be either publicly affiliated with the selected projects, or we will find them through snowball sampling with other interviewees. Establishing who these individuals are, and which interviews will be of most value for the purposes of PROSO, will require further desk research. The recruitment process will involve using publically available contact details in most cases, although we may obtain contact details from other informants in the case of snowball sampling. We will instigate contact by email (see the recruitment email template, Appendix 1) and follow-up with a second email or phone call one to two weeks later, if there has been no response. In addition to the recruitment email, a participant information sheet (Appendix 2) and the informed consent document (Appendix 3) will also be emailed to all prospective participants prior to the interview. The University of Surrey Ethics Committee reviewed this project and granted it a favourable ethical opinion (UEC/2016/031/FHMS; the confirmation of ethical opinion was granted 19 July 2016). This ethics application incorporated the recruitment email template, participant information sheet, participant consent document, and draft interview schedule – please see Appendices 1-4. Partner institutions were responsible for ethics application within their own respective countries as part of PROSO Work Package 9. They will carry out interviews using their own participant information and consent documents, depending on the requirements of their home ethics institution. Where the interview takes place in-person, we will obtain the signed consent form at that time (bringing a form with us for them to sign). If the interview takes place over telephone or VoIP through conferencing software, we will ask participants to scan and email us their signed form. If they do not have access to a scanner, we will mail them a copy of the form with a stamped self-addressed envelope so they can return the signed form to us at no cost to them. We will verbally reconfirm consent at the beginning of the telephone interview. An interview will not take place if the consent form has not been signed.
