Participatory Research: Key Themes, Challenges, and Future Directions
Authors: Lisa Garnham, Gillian MacIntyre and Fiona McHardy
The Centre for Health Policy recently hosted a short discussion group on participatory research. As a group of academics, we set out to explore what participatory research means to us, both in terms of what it is and how we value it. In doing so, we also considered the challenges we collectively face and how we might begin to collaborate to address or cope with those challenges.
This blog outlines the key issues raised through that discussion and finishes by outlining the type of support we want to cultivate for participatory research at the University of Strathclyde. As a socially progressive institution, fostering a research culture that embraces participation in both teaching and research is vital to our work.
Definitional Clarity: The term 'participatory research' encompasses a wide range of methods and approaches. When we use this term, it is crucial to be clear about what we mean by participatory research – are we referring to specific methods, a broader approach, or both?
Varied Forms and Depths of Participation: Different projects require different forms and depths of participation. While deeper participation is usually desirable, it often encounters significant obstacles, akin to hitting a "brick wall” – for example pre-existing ideas around what constitutes valid knowledge/worldviews or University administrative procedures. Moreover, deep participation is much less well explored in relation to quantitative studies, compared with qualitative research. While some of these differences reflect a diversity in the need for participation, they more often reflect the difficulty of engaging meaningfully in participation in different research contexts.
Practical Hurdles: There are several practical challenges in participatory research, including securing funding for genuinely co-produced research, addressing privacy and ethical concerns, and managing payments for participants. Issues like payment and valuing contributions pose significant challenges and are exacerbated by reforms in the benefits system that constrain our ability to compensate participants for their time in a meaningful way.
Policy and Practice Impact and Relevance: While we ask a lot from participants, we cannot always guarantee policy influence. This raises two issues: the first is around the ethics of engaging with participants if we know or suspect that our influence over policy is indirect or slight. The second is a question of whether participatory research is "irrelevant" if it fails to impact policy, or if there are other, direct benefits of taking a participatory approach that have value beyond potential policy influence. Participatory research must therefore actively address the context of democratic participation, challenging injustices and inequalities.
Credibility: Participatory research has the potential to democratise evidence-based policy by providing a platform for diverse types of knowledge. However, when presenting the findings of participatory research, we often face push-back and concerns about objectivity, methodological rigor and generalisability, which undermine the perceived credibility of participatory research. This poses critical questions about who gets to create and benefit from knowledge and how we might challenge and push back again those questions that undermine the credibility of participatory work.
Context and Values: The strength of participatory research lies in its deep recognition of context and values. However, this also presents a challenge in being taken seriously as a valid form of knowledge. It is important that we reflect on the role of participatory research in a landscape of disinformation and polarisation of perspectives, especially in supporting marginalised and oppressed communities.
Power Dynamics: The increased requirement for Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) in funding applications is a positive development but risks tokenism. Ensuring genuine and authentic participation is essential and requires that participants are brought in at the start of a research project, rather than after key issues and framing have been decided by researchers. However, giving up control in participatory research is challenging, and placing responsibility on participants can place undue pressure on them too. Recognising this dynamic and taking action to balance it where possible, is crucial.
Key Points for Action
In bringing together the wealth of experience in participatory research among the Centre for Health Policy’s members, we discussed moving forward along two paths:
- Community of Practice: Developing a community of practice for sharing resources, ideas, and tools to support participatory research, drawing on the diverse expertise of staff and students across the University of Strathclyde’s Faculty of Humanities and Social Science.
- Advocacy and Recognition: Advocating for the potential of participatory research in generating useful evidence for policymakers, thereby striving to improve and extend recognition of its value as a tool for social justice.
We look forward to sharing this journey with you as we make progress! To learn more about the participatory research CHP is involved in, please explore our research profiles.