What “Coproduction” in Participatory Research Means From Participants’ Perspectives: A Collaborative Autoethnographic Inquiry

Abstract

In participatory health research, people with lived experience of illness participate as co-researchers in the co-production of knowledge along with academic researchers. A central idea is to democratize knowledge production by creating space for co-researchers’ experiential, embodied knowledge. The participatory research literature includes reflexive analyses exploring the complexities of co-production in participatory research. However, despite the democratic ideals, these analyses are almost always written by academic researchers alone. In this article, two co-researchers with lived experience of Parkinson’s disease and an academic researcher carry out a collaborative autoethnographic inquiry into what “co-production” in participatory research means for participants from their own perspectives. In so doing, the article presents and illustrates a distinctive format for collaborative autoethnography as a participatory method that enables co-researchers and academic researchers to investigate, write, and publish about co-production together through dialogue across personal narratives. It also presents the specific insider insights the inquiry generated into what co-production means for participants.