Jargon Buster
While we try our best to avoid jargon on this website, it is sometimes inevitable! On this page, we have put together a list of clear, easy-to-understand explanations for words and phrases you might see on this website (aka, a jargon buster!)
This list is continually updated. If you come across any words or phrases on this website that don’t make sense, please feel free to submit a form requesting that we add an explanation to this page.
Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS): NHS services in the UK that support the mental health, emotions and wellbeing of children and young people, usually up to the age of 18.
Dissertation/thesis: A large research project completed by a student as part of a university degree. A dissertation is usually part of an undergraduate or master’s degree, and a thesis is usually completely as part of a doctoral degree.
Ethical approval: A study having ethical approval means an independent committee has checked that a research study is safe, fair, and appropriate to go ahead.
Evidence-based: If something is ‘evidence-based’, it means that the best available research and knowledge has been used to guide decisions or actions, rather than opinion or guesswork.
Intervention: An activity, treatment, programme or approach designed to improve health or wellbeing.
Open access: If a research article is open access, it means that it is available online for anyone to read, download and share for free. If a research article isn’t open access, this usually means that people (or an organisation they are part of, like a university) need to pay the journal to read it.
Patient and public involvement (PPI): When patients, carers, and members of the public have been involved in planning, designing, conducting, or sharing research.
Policy brief: A short document that summarises research evidence and explains what it might mean for policy or decision-making.
Qualitative research: A type of research that explores people's experiences, views, feelings and behaviours. Rather than collecting numbers and statistics, qualitative research gathers detailed information through methods like interviews or focus groups.
Quantitative research: A type of research that uses numbers and statistics to answer questions. Data is collected through methods like surveys, questionnaires, experiments, and medical records, and analysed to look for patterns, differences or relationships.
Systematic review: A type of research that brings together and evaluates all the relevant research on a topic to understand what the overall evidence shows.
Photo by Getty Images on Unsplash