Four members of the Patient Involvement Group at the School of Health Sciences, University of Tasmania, Australia, discuss the need for rigour in data collection

Hill et al (2017) and Trocky (2017) present papers on two areas that are rarely examined in the nursing research literature. Hill’s team explore job satisfaction and other issues related to the way in which research assistants participate in research studies. They use the example of community members collecting data from vulnerable populations. Trocky (2017) covers the engagement of clinical nurses in the research process in a rural hospital environment. Both papers relate to patient care contexts in the US, although they provide lessons for any researcher planning to engage third parties to collect primary data from patients.