Participant Information Sheet: UK business and industry round table May 2026

Title of study: Developing Business-Aware Academics

You are being invited to take part in an academic research study. Before you decide to participate in this study, it is important that you understand why the research is being done and what it will involve. Please take the time to read the following information carefully.

Purpose of the research

The Developing Business-Aware Academics (DBAA) project is funded by Research England. It brings together academics, researcher developers, industry, non- profits and policy makers to inspire collaborative and impactful research that addresses today’s most urgent societal and environmental challenges. As part of the project, this roundtable discussion is being conducted to contribute to the building of an evidence base to inform the design of initiatives that will offer doctoral and early-career researchers from all disciplines the knowledge, skills, and networking opportunities to engage effectively beyond academia.

Who is doing this research?

The lead researcher of this study is Professor Alison Truelove, who is Director of the Centre for Innovation in Business Education at the University of Exeter Business School. Other researchers on the team include Dr Jo Bowler, Dr Kate Ellis, Holly Frostwick, and Dr Felipe Do Nascimento Rodrigues.

This roundtable discussion is being co-facilitated by the DBAA project team and the Chartered Association of Business Schools.

Ethical review of this Research

This study has been reviewed by the University of Exeter Business School Research Ethics Committee and received a favourable review. The review reference is 12068635. The Business School Ethics Committee may be contacted by email via the Co-Director, Steven Boyne, S.Boyne@exeter.ac.uk. For any comments or complaints please contact Research Ethics and Governance, cgr-reg@exeter.ac.uk.

Procedures of this study

You are invited to participate in a roundtable discussion as part of our research study. The roundtable discussion will take approximately 90 minutes and will be conducted in-person at the offices of the Chartered Association of Business Schools, 40 Queen St, London EC4R 1DD, from 1pm until 4pm on the 26th May 2026. During the roundtable, you will be asked a series of questions about what makes for a successful collaboration between industry and academia. The questions are designed to gather your professional experiences, personal opinions, and insights. With your consent, the discussion will be audio-recorded to ensure accuracy in capturing your responses. Where the roundtable is held online, the recording will also include video. This recording will be transcribed and analysed for research purposes. You may decline to answer any question or leave the roundtable discussion at any time without any consequences. Your participation is entirely voluntary.

Benefits and risks of taking part

There is unlikely to be any immediate direct or personal benefit to you in taking part, but we hope the research findings will inform the development of training initiatives in business skills, competencies and mindsets to enable more effective collaboration between industry and academia in future, that you may find useful in your career. There may be some benefit to society; but this cannot be assured at the start of the research project. There are no risks to taking part in this research greater than that which you may encounter daily in your normal life. If you feel any discomfort or doubt about taking part, you can take a break at any time during the roundtable discussion or leave the session completely at any time.

Voluntary participation and your right to withdraw.

Your participation in this study is entirely voluntary. You are under no obligation to take part, and you may withdraw at any time prior to the start of data analysis. If you stop participating before completing the roundtable discussion, the researcher will ask you if you are happy for the partial transcript to be used for research purposes. The partial transcript will only be used with your consent. If you wish to withdraw your transcript after completing the roundtable, you should email the researcher from the email account you cited on the consent form. The researcher will remove your data from the research data and send you confirmation of the removal. Withdrawal after 26 June 2026 will not be possible because data analysis will have begun (though you will be able to request that your data are withdrawn from any future analysis). You will not be able to have your data withdrawn after the results have been published.

Anonymity

Your participant data will be link-anonymised to the researcher; your name and contact details will not be linked to the transcript of the roundtable discussion, but will be linked through the consent form, so that the researcher can send the transcript to you to check for accuracy. You will be allocated a unique participant number, which will be linked to the corresponding transcript. Some personal characteristics such as age, ethnicity, gender and disability will be linked from the consent form to the transcript, to ensure that research findings and outputs are inclusive and accessible.

Roundtables will be held under the Chatham House rule. At the beginning of the roundtable discussion, you will be invited to say which organisation you are from. This question will be optional, and you may choose to withhold that information without detriment. If you choose to answer it, the researcher will be able to link your organisation to your contributions throughout the transcript.

Your personal data will not be identifiable in publication. You will be asked for your consent to use any quotation that can be attributed to your organisation (if you provided that information) prior to publication.

The Data Controller for this research is the University of Exeter. You may contact the Information Governance office of the University of Exeter by emailing dataprotection@exeter.ac.uk.

University of Exeter Data Protection for Research Statement

Data Management

Audio-recordings (and video recordings, for online events) of the roundtable discussions will be uploaded to the project SharePoint site as soon as possible after the event and deleted from the recording device immediately thereafter. Access to the SharePoint folder will be controlled through strict folder permissions.

You will be invited to check your transcript for accuracy. Audio-recordings (and video recordings, for online events) of the roundtable discussions will be deleted as soon as the transcript is finalised. Once finalised, transcripts will be stored on the project SharePoint site, accessible only by those with folder access permissions. Data will be backed up in line with the University of Exeter’s automatic processes for backup and recovery.

As required by Research England, any large datasets generated through the project will be stored in the Open Research Exeter (ORE) repository, or equivalent, upon publication, and at the end of the project in June 2027, and registered via Symplectic so that it can be of benefit to the economy and society more widely after the project is complete. Otherwise, data will be destroyed ten years after the end of the project, in line with the requirements of the records retention schedule.

The Results

Results will be published or presented in academic papers, reports and / or presentations. If you wish to be updated about the results of this study, please email dbaa@exeter.ac.uk.

Thank you for participating in this study.

Thank you for taking part in our research about how best to bring together academics, researcher developers, industry, non- profits and policy makers to inspire collaborative and impactful research that addresses today’s most urgent societal and environmental challenges.

The purpose of this focus group was to contribute to the building of an evidence base to inform the design of initiatives that will offer doctoral and early-career researchers from all disciplines the knowledge, skills, and networking opportunities to engage effectively beyond academia.

If you have any questions or you are interested in finding out more about this research you may contact the researcher, Kate Ellis, by email at K.Ellis2@exeter.ac.uk.