Making trials more informative – learn more

The INFORM project identified 12 Good Practice Actions that were identified as key to producing informative trials. The following training modules give background context to each of the actions, and at the foot of each module, we suggest straightforward ways to help funders operationalise these.

Complying with our Good Practice Actions may have resource implications. For example, working with communities to develop effective and inclusive recruitment and retention strategies (Good Practice Action 3) requires appropriate funding. However, not all actions involve additional costs. Using structured tools such as those suggested at the design stage (Good Practice Action 4) is unlikely to require additional resources; trial teams simply need to use them.  Where additional funding is needed, funders should consider providing it to ensure a trial is informative. It is important to recognise that lack of funding alone does not explain the prevalence of uninformative trials. Lack of awareness, insufficient methodological expertise within the trial teams, and the absence of structures to support or enforce actions such as those we propose are likely to be at least as important.

Links to existing resources are given and we also include an example grant form that would be relevant at the pre-submission stage. This is referred to as the INFORM Structured Grant Form for Trials  and is set out with questions and guidance for applicants. We have included this as it may help funders to shape their pre-submission process to better align with producing informative trials.

We also have a short paper describing how we developed the 12 Good Practice Actions (Prowse et al, 2026).