Service users and academics: collaborators not competitors in welfare reserach

Abstract

ABSTRACT The importance of actively involving users of welfare services in research has increasingly gained ground in both public policy documents and the academic literature. User involvement is increasingly considered a precondition to obtain external funding for research projects. However, a growing opposition to this development among academic researchers appears to increase. The participation of users as co-researchers is seen as a degradation of the researchers’ competence and lacking respect for what creates quality in research. The objections and discussions illustrate the need for a renewed discussion about how knowledge is created and what differences the inclusion of service users in research could bring to the knowledge production process. This article aims to address these issues, and concludes that the participation of users as co-researchers does not mean that academic competence and qualifications are downgraded, but does imply acknowledgement and recognition of the different competencies brought by different actors into the research process. Together, the different competencies will create a broader and more solid basis for knowledge development. The discussion about service user involvement in research should primarily be transformed into a debate about forms of collaboration and how user involvement and co-research could be implemented in ways where both researchers and users could benefit and further improve the development of welfare services.