Co-produced Research Research Articles

‘Don't show the play at the football ground, nobody will come’: the micro-sociality of co-produced research in an English provincial city

This article examines the idea that community is best understood through the concept of micro-sociality, as a verb, as ongoing social relations in action, rather than a thing to be possessed, lacked or lost. Such an emphasis on already-existing relations has consequences for the conduct of publicly-funded interventions including socially engaged research projects. This article tells a part of the story of one such project in Peterborough, England in the 2010s. If the project was counter-cultural in working with what was already happening in the city, rather than seeking to proselytize a culturally specific view of citizenship and the arts, it also faced its own political choices regarding whose work to accompany and how. Initiated by a group of outsider academics and artists, it involved transformations at varying scales, both fleeting and longer-lasting, often unplanned. The article takes a look at the project’s own microsociality in the choices city residents made to accompany its intentions and practices. Like other people, university researchers and artists are seen to depend on social relations, including the commitment and care of people they work with.

Co-production in mental health research: reflections from the People Study

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the process of co-producing mental health research where work was shared between university academics, charity-based researchers and a Lived Experience Advisory Panel. Design/methodology/approach – The authors express the opinions of a research team made up of people with experience of using mental health services, being carers and being academically trained researchers from a range of health and social science disciplines. Some had experience in several areas. The paper is co-produced to provide collective reflection and recommendations. Findings – Co-production of research is not well documented in published literature. The authors believe there is scope to develop co-production approaches, but further conceptual and theoretical work is needed alongside empirical studies. A socially situated complex research project, possibly involving multi-stakeholder groups, demands flexibility in approach. Similarly to user-controlled and other emancipatory methodologies, co-production makes the democratisation of research a primary objective in order to produce better quality and more relevant studies. Co-production also addresses inequalities in power and control within research projects; this way of working does provide a healthy challenge to traditional research hierarchies. Practical implications – Lessons learned should be honestly shared to develop co-production research methods. Projects need to have a strategy for how to value different contributions and facilitate constructive relationships if discord emerges. Establishing clear project roles, expectations and process for payment are essential in developing genuine collaborative partnerships. Originality/value – It is a viewpoint paper.

Coproducing global change research and geography

This response identifies three areas of agreement with my interlocutors. One is the importance of global change science now and in the future; a second is the real capacity that geographers possess to shape the content and direction of global change science, building on past achievements; and the third is the existence of ‘group think’ in parts of global change science, presenting a target for constructive criticism but also an opportunity for serious engagement. The response then addresses specific points raised in the five commentaries. These points pertain to the burden of academic responsibility, the political aims of ‘Changing the Anthropo(s)cene’, the power of reason, the virtues of working ‘inside’ global change science, the volume and kind of contributions made by geographers so far and – finally – the dilemmas of engaging global change science as critic or friend.

Co-production of family literacy projects to enhance early literacy development

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to report on how early years practitioners worked with the ORIM Framework to support work with parents to promote early literacy experiences.Design/methodology/approach– Co-produced Knowledge Exchange (KE) was used to develop and evaluate work with parents to facilitate their young children’s literacy. Information was gathered in discussion groups, interviews with parents and practitioners and feedback from all the parties involved.Findings– Practitioners and families engaged with each other in the further development of an established literacy programme, and families demonstrated “ownership” of the co-produced knowledge after the end of the project.Research limitations/implications– Project design in co-produced research and KE is necessarily flexible. The focus is on practitioners’ knowledge and ownership of the process, sharing knowledge with parents and enhancing children’s experiences.Practical implications– Practices that can enhance parental engagement in their children’s early literacy are varied and multiple and ORIM can be used flexibly to plan, develop and evaluate innovative and community – (and family –) specific practices.Social implications– Where parents have more knowledge of children’s early literacy development they are in a better position to support them; for learning communities there are implications in terms of future development of work with families to support early literacy development.Originality/value– This paper contributes an original approach to the co-production of research with early years practitioners. It also identifies specific issues around the ethics of ownership in co-produced research.

Towards a diagnostic adaptation science

How should climate change adaptation research be performed? Two principles are widely accepted and articulated in current adaptation-related research programmes such as the global Future Earth programme, the European Horizon 2020 programme and the Dutch Knowledge for Climate programme, just to name a few examples. The first one is that adaptation research should be transdisciplinary and solution-oriented (also called problem-oriented) in that it aims at contributing to ‘‘real-world’’ problem solving rather than purely advancing research in its own right (Cash et al. 2003; Gibbons et al. 1994; Moss et al. 2013). Achieving this aim entails co-designing and co-producing research together with stakeholders (Swart et al. 2014). The second principle is that adaptation research should be interdisciplinary in that it integrates knowledge from a range of natural and social science disciplines. And indeed, a wide variety of methods are currently applied in adaptation research, including participatory, experimental, decision analysis, behavioural analysis, institutional analysis and climate and impact simulation methods (Hinkel and Bisaro 2014). Less consensus can be found on how exactly those two principles shall be put into practice. Regarding transdisciplinarity, there is a substantial literature that has proposed various definitions and models for transdisciplinary research, including ‘‘mode-2’’ knowledge production (Gibbons et al. 1994), post-normal science (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1993) and action research (Lewin 1946). Regarding interdisciplinarity, there is hardly any dedicated literature exploring how to realise the integration of knowledge from diverse disciplines and beyond (Hinkel 2008). Nevertheless, there is a widespread model on how to combine methods, often called top-down approach (Dessai and Hulme 2004), which has dominated adaptation research from its beginnings. Climate models are run to produce climate scenarios, which are then downscaled and results are put into various sectoral climate impact models, sometimes followed by valuation methods to value projected climate impacts. Finally, the results may be fed into macroeconomic models in order to estimate economy-wide implication and/or decision analysis methods. But is the top-down model the only meaningful model of interdisciplinarity for climate adaptation? It certainly was a meaningful model in the early days of climate change research when the main question addressed was by how much adaptation could offset climate impacts at an aggregate level in order to prevent ‘‘dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system’’, which is the ultimate objective of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC 1992, Article 2). In recent years, adaptation has become a practical necessity, and the field has progressed from focusing on questions concerning climate impacts and costs and benefits of adaptation at an international scale to a much wider array of questions at all scales, related to, e.g., human perception, institutional change, equity, development and barriers to & Jochen Hinkel hinkel@globalclimateforum.org

Disaster risk and its reduction: an agenda for urban Africa

Populations and assets, in African cities, small and large, are among the most vulnerable to disaster risk globally. Climate change and demographic shifts add urgency and uncertainty. This paper outlines priorities for research responding to this challenge. We argue for integrative approaches that can capture multi-hazard risk and include hazards from across the spectrum of everyday to catastrophic, and their interactions. For such approaches to shape policy, new efforts are needed to develop political support, technical capacity and methodologies to enable systematic data collection and analysis, including socially and spatially disaggregated data. We also argue for the interdependence of risk and urban development policy, and a focus on institutions as objects and partners for co-produced research, including local government as the focal point for risk reduction and new roles for civil society and the private sector. This emerging research agenda also needs to ask what it is that makes African cities di...

‘Avoiding the certainty trap’: a research programme for the policy–practice interface

This paper outlines the rationale for a research focus on how meaning emerges from the interfaces between research, policy, and practice. In exploring where different constructions of risk, resilience, and landscape occur in the policy and practice discourses surrounding current developments in Victorian bushfire policy, this paper goes beyond simply advocating better science–policy–practice relationships by demonstrating the challenges of operationalising adaptive governance principles. Our findings stress that change can arise from interacting discourses on the policy–practice interface. Yet, although this may be the most adaptive moment in the policy process, producing multiple insights and alternative options, it is vulnerable to institutionalised discourses that obstruct flexible practice. Complex socioecological issues such as bushfire, we argue, require more explicit engagement with the processes of practice inherent in policy formulation. The paper offers coproductive research strategies as contributing to more flexible governance arrangements to improve adaptive policy design.

Network analysis in co-productive research with a multi-sector community collaboration

Network analysis in co-productive research with a multi-sector community collaboration

Transdisciplinary research: understanding the stakeholder perspective

It is accepted that the effective uptake of academic research into policy and practice requires the active involvement of stakeholders. However, understanding participation from the perspectives of stakeholders remains poorly understood. We show that non-academic participants bring multiple knowledges and expertises vital to research. We demonstrate that flexibility in terms of how research is framed, conducted and in the meaning of what constitutes “success” is crucial. We argue that research needs to move towards co-produced transdisciplinary research. In doing so, research can be more representative of stakeholder interests and knowledges, and also make important contributions to academic impact.

OP0141 Development and Evaluation of an Online Course on Key Skills in Influencing Healthcare

BackgroundAs more people live longer with chronic conditions, such as arthritis and rheumatism, it is essential that they become involved in healthcare to help improve the patient's experience, identify patient...

Consumer measures and research co-production: a pilot study evaluating the recovery orientation of a mental health program collaboration

A clinical service and a community-managed service have collaborated to deliver a service supporting people with severe and enduring mental illness and complex needs. This study aims to evaluate the recovery-orientation of the service by means of a consumer-led program evaluation utilising validated measures and qualitative interviews. The Recovery Self-Assessment (RSA) and the Recovery Enhancing Environment measure (REE) indicated that the things done well included goal setting and monitoring, practical assistance and encouragement. Things to improve were access to records; variety in treatment options; contributing to advisory boards; and support regarding sexuality, spirituality and relationships. Consumers interviewed peer-to-peer actively engaged with the evaluation.

ETNOGRAFÍA PARA LA PAZ, LA INTERCULTURALIDAD Y LOS CONFLICTOS

This article presents some propositional level elements for ethnographic research aimed at peace studies, multiculturalism, conflict and democracy, after considering the need to decolonize the thinking and practice of the method. I propose that this ethnography —in our Latin American environment— will be critical, research coproduction, which contribute to the knowledge of our sociocultural realities.

Master and Apprentice or Difference and Complementarity? Local Government Practitioners, Doctoral Studies and Co-produced Research

In their search for innovative policy solutions to complex social problematics, local governance practitioners will look to synergising specific policy guidance from government departments with conceptual scientific research outputs. UK academics are also now expected to emphasise the relevance of their research and to increase its utilisation by practitioners. Away from utilitarian pressures, academics from applied discipline, such as Public Administration and Local Government Studies are increasingly drawn to the benefits of co-produced research. Despite the pressure for more co-research there are few opportunities for practitioners and academics to nurture relationships that would support close collaboration. This paper looks at the opportunity for closer collaboration when practitioners undertake research degrees, in order to enhance their cognitive skills and develop greater scientific knowledge of particular policy domains. If this route to closer collaboration is to succeed, it will require academics to think differently about their relationship with practitioner-students.

'Beyond text': exploring ethos and method in co-producing research with communities

There is a critique of research conducted in communities which fails to include communities in its design and undertaking. In parallel, academic research is increasingly being measured according to its benefit to the wider society. Co-productive research is a response to these challenges which offers a way of recognizing the resource contribution of communities to research and emphasizing the conduct of research ‘with’ communities rather than ‘on’ communities. This article identifies the reliance on ‘text’ in the research process as a barrier to delivering meaningful co-productive research with communities. ‘Beyond-text’ tools are emerging across academic disciplines and include story-telling, performance, art and photography. Recent research emphasizes the empowering potential of these methods by facilitating greater reflection on the lived experience of those involved. This article looks at examples of research which have employed ‘beyond text’ methods to consider their potential to deliver co-produced research with communities. It also asks whether it is the application of specific technical approaches and methods, or the underlying ethos within which research is conducted that is most critical to challenging unequal power relationships. It argues that beyond-text methods need to be applied within a wider set of values which re-conceptualize the role of the researcher working with communities.

Doing research together: bringing down barriers through the ‘coproduction’ of personality disorder research

Background: historical assumptions and knowledge about personality disorders (PDs) have inhibited efforts to improve PD services. Public and patient involvement in research has become a requirement of UK health services research. The potential for people with personal experiences of PD to ‘coproduce’ research knowledge as a means to transform PD services is largely unexplored.Objectives: to consider the extent to which research teams on two recent projects have ‘coproduced’ knowledge about PD, and the potential impact of coproduction on research findings and service delivery.Setting: two qualitative research projects were conducted by teams comprising conventional academic, clinical, service user and carer researchers. Reflective writing by researchers was analysed thematically to explore research objectives.Findings: researchers reported that their high expectations of research coproduction were mostly met, that findings would have been different without involvement of service user and carer researchers, and that the research would have wider credibility because of their involvement.Conclusions: coproduction is characterised by enabling perspectives from outside the conventional clinical‐academic health research team to inform the research decision‐making process, and by self‐conscious reflection to make explicit how findings are shaped as a result. The potential to improve PD services by coproducing knowledge was demonstrated.

“Staying native”: coproduction in mental health services research

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to describe a recent experiment in research coproduction in an evaluation of service planning at a London Mental Health NHS Trust. The paper aims to consider whether members of the research team who have themselves been users of mental health services are able to contribute to the research process as “experts by experience”, or if their experiential knowledge is “colonized” within the academic research team.Design/methodology/approachA qualitative, comparative case study approach was adopted, using structured observations and semi‐structured interviews. Researchers' reflective accounts and a reflective focus group were employed to explore the process of coproduction.FindingsThe paper concludes that, far from “colonising” expertise by experience, the experiment builds local capacity in research coproduction and usefully informs a service planning process that reflects the priorities and concerns of a range of stakeholders.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper describes a small, local experiment in research coproduction and so findings are limited in their scope. However, the study demonstrates an effective methodological approach to evaluating, empirically, the impact of coproduction on the health services research (HSR) process.Practical implicationsThe paper demonstrates the potential for repeated exercises in coproduction to build capacity in collaborative approaches to both HSR and service planning.Originality/valueThe involvement of experts by experience is increasingly a policy requirement in the domains of both health service planning and HSR in the UK. There are very few empirical studies that evaluate the impact of that coproduction.

Managing sensitive relations in co-produced planning research

Co-produced research is an increasingly prominent feature of universities. Collaboration can bring many benefits, offering unique and illuminating insights into the interface between theory, academia, policy and practice. Moreover, it often facilitates access to otherwise impenetrable fields of study. Yet it also brings immense challenges. This article describes the knowledge co-production process in a research project looking at national security, focusing on the collaboration between academia and government policy-makers. As demonstrated, critical tensions emerged in the commissioning process, in the conduct of the empirical work, and with regard to the dissemination of findings. The authors discuss various coping strategies employed to meet these challenges, which are applicable across other aspects of research co-production.

A bridge over troubled waters: Bridging organisations and entrepreneurial opportunities in emerging sectors

Bridging institutions or organisations are regarded as having positive effects in the Sectoral Systems of Innovation (SSI) literature, particularly in compensating for weaknesses in these systems. Yet, we know little about the organisational practices that make their role effective, or the types of innovation paths that they may facilitate within a system. This paper shows how bridging organisations may promote neglected areas of creativity and potential disruptive innovation. These blocked opportunities tend to emerge at the boundaries of SSI: where old sectors overlap and new trajectories form. We draw on the social networks, entrepreneurship and disruptive innovation literature and analyse an intervention in the UK electronic games industry: the evaluation of business propositions exploiting new gaming platforms such as mobile telephones, DVD and film. Using an innovative co-productive research design, the study shows how the effectiveness of bridging organisation activity depends on key design choices and brokerage capabilities.

Uma sociologia do trabalho contrastada

O artigo propõe uma leitura sistêmica do trabalho e dos processos de trabalho institucionais que intervêm nos esquemas de exclusão social. Centra-se especificamente no processo de trabalho institucional dentro de um hospital de saúde mental, propondo uma analogia com os das fábricas. O trabalho de enfermaria e sua história possibilitam, como modelo paradigmático, a releitura da história do trabalhador em geral, uma vez que nessa área eles atuam sobre os companheiros que se encontram em processo de degradação social. As dimensões abordadas a partir desse eixo são: a intervenção institucional e os processos de trabalho; o macroprocesso de exclusão/extinção social; e a epistemologia da co-produção de pesquisa para a análise dos processos sociais de trabalho. Nossa abordagem gnosiológica baseia-se na pesquisa co-produzida, a qual se constitui de dispositivos de intervenção transdisciplinares, entrevistas semi-estruturadas, histórias de vida focalizadas, observações de campo, relatos de co-pesquisadores trabalhadores e intertextos.

New Feminist Approaches to Social Science Methodologies: An Introduction

New Feminist Approaches to Social Science Methodologies: An Introduction