DfE user research standards

The standards you must meet when delivering user research in DfE.

We are introducing a set of standards so that you know what is expected of you as you do your work. They help ensure we are meeting high levels of quality, ethics and safety. You must meet these standards in your work.

Standard Status
Participant safeguarding in user research Published
Personal data handling in user research Published
User research planning Beta
Keeping safe during user research In development
User research participant recruitment In development

Our standards aren't intended to tell you how you should work, unless this is required by other departmental policies or the law. You and your team should develop the right way of working for you, which delivers high quality, safe and ethical user research meeting these standards.

We aim to have all of our standards published during 2024.

Assuring against our standards

We take a 'self assurance first' approach. Each standard includes a checklist of what you need to do. You must ensure you always meet all the requirements.

Sometimes your work may be reviewed by a senior or lead user researcher, so make sure you keep records, and are ready to demonstrate how you've met each standard in your research.

The Service Standard

As well as our DfE user research standards, your work must always also meet the government Service Standard. This is the case whether or not your team will go through service assessments.

Visit our Apply the Service Standard in DfE manual.

How we develop and maintain our UR standards

Our standards are owned, written and kept updated by user researchers across our DfE user research community. The head of user research is responsible for ensuring we have a set of professional standards, and this is part of DfE's Digital Data Technology strategy (DfE intranet).

You can give us feedback on them in the #user_research Slack channel (opens in a new tab), or by contacting the head of user research, Tom Adams.

Help and advice

Each of our standards includes links to guidance content and sources of help.

You can always ask for advice from:

If you are a new user researcher in DfE, you should attend a UR profession onboarding session, which covers the UR standards.