I agreed with this insight point, a good researcher should keep seeking ways their research to reach ordinary person.

A good example of where this can happen - is in the summary version of systematic reviews in the Cochrane Library. At the beginning of a review - they often encourage a 'lay-persons language' perspective. I wouldn't use the term 'common' however to describe public consumers of research. I think that the term 'lay person' is better - and the use of a 'lay summary' to describe the main intentions, process and outcome of research is the best option for general public consumption. The 'average' person does not need to know specific nuances of sampling, data collection and analysis etc

I forgot to mention - another good way of disseminating research findings to a wider general public is through online reports and summaries, local meetings, forums, local health boards - and interest groups i.e. charity organisations

If you want to make your research useful to the common man, here are 3 main tips I believe would help:

1) choose a topic that is actually interesting to people and still requires answers

2) be brief and to the point in sharing your messages

3) use simple vocabulary

best, 

Sarah Assaad

We at the Finnish Cancer Registry have the principle of making easy-to-understand versions of studies that are might be of interest of "common persons" (see http://www.cancer.fi/syoparekisteri/en/research/). Publications of public interest are also made known in twitter when they come out, but our twitter clients need to understand the text as it has been published in the scientific journal.

We also publish a book that describes key results of all our massive research activity in a condenced format. This book has been distributed since the 1980s to about 10% of Finnish population in Finnish, Swedish or English (see pdf version http://cancer-fi-bin.directo.fi/@Bin/8617164631095e75633d177d90a2ea80/1454400433/application/pdf/91148164/Cancer_in_Finland_19.6.13_sivuittain.pdf). Several other cancer research institutes have later copied this format of forwarding facts to lay people.

Eero I

• By explaining your research work using very simple language and by correlating your research in the lab to the real world.
• By another means explaining the clinical application of your research.
• The job can be done by explaining the future outcome of your research and its impact on the community.
• This issue could be accomplished by giving an advice resulted from conducting our research and have a positive impact on the human health in case that the research related to medical area. 
• finally we can use simple figures, images and statistical data that simplifies the research ideas and highlight the importance of conducting such a research.

Guidelines on how to "translate" scientific facts into plain language are available from several institutions / organizations. A whole list of  resources on this topic can be found at: http://ktdrr.org/resources/plst/.

All the best,

Valentin

http://ktdrr.org/resources/plst/

I agree with Sarah--you must start with studying something that interests the public and your interventions, if there are any should be co-designed with the public.  PCORI in the US is very good at having patient (public) input at every stage of the research process from what questions to ask, to writing the grant, to offering the intervention to disseminating the results.   We are the public but sometimes we forget.

There are two different audiences - 1) people who have the condition being studied and/or are relatives or friends of those with the condition and 2) practitioners.  You need to think about why either would be interested in your research as well as how they can use it.  This needs to be done as part of the research design stage and they need to be involved starting at this stage and continuing throughtout the research and publication stages.  Often what researchers think the public and practitioners are interested in and/or will find useful is very different from what they actually are interested in/will find useful.

One way to get the public interested is to do work in the schools.  In addition to doing guest speaking, it also includes things like tutoring and being a judge at the science fair.  Your science then becomes personal to them and thus more interesting.  This will continue into adulthood.

I'm a huge advocate of face-to-face communication of your findings. Presenting at conferences with an audience who is interested in your work is nice. If you're doing community-engaged or community-placed research, it's great to get on the agenda for local community meetings. For data dissemination of state-level behavior surveillance in New Mexico (like YRBS or BRFSS), we do a 'road show' of presentations at community centers, leveraging relationships with stakeholders in each community to arrange the presentations. Sharing findings in this way allows us to hear feedback from our communities, which gives us context for the data we report. It also builds our relationships with our communities. Finally, any education you can provide to policy-makers around your findings, if they're relevant to policy making, is really important. 

A project we work on in New Mexico (which we adapted from a similar project in Vermont) is disseminating local-level YRBS data directly to high school students, helping them do their own analysis/interpretation, and supporting them to present the data to their schools & communities. Anecdotally, I find that policy makers and adult stakeholders are WAY more receptive to hearing results from their young people than from me!

Hi, if you feel the research done is really going to help the common man find out some NGOs working at the grass-root levels and share the findings with them. The genuine NGOs will help in spreading the important information to people in their work area

You could also tap some Newspaper and get the research published.

I believe in taking permission from a Mall Authority and spreading the information there in the peak hours. We did an awareness session on TB and DOTs in a mall some 5-6 years back in Delhi.

You could make flex with these findings both in Hindi and English and with the help of two three people go to a market and stand there and talk about it with a small microphone. You could even answer people's questions then and there.

i think most research problems are done to answer a given prevailing problem in society or community, where findings can be used to solve that particular problem, hence targeted at the common man, so in this case, after one publishing the findings, you can discuss with key people in the community or at policy level, and in NGOs, such that you findings can be incorporated or integrated to help the common man....

I'm a first year phd student and here at Canterbury Christ Church University in Kent, and that is the focus of our research conference this year. 

Our conference title is ‘The impact of research outside academia’ where we are asked to examine how our research impacts upon the wider society, culture and economy outside of the university.

So looking forward to hearing the wide perspectives of everyone's research and having the opportunity of presenting for the first time.

Research often involves a great deal of cooperation and coordination among many different people in different disciplines and institutions, ethical standards promote the values that are essential to collaborative work, such as trust, accountability, mutual respect, and fairness. Researchers can be held accountable to the public.

By doing research on common people for their common problems and making them aware of solutions you invented for their problems.