Accessing participatory research impact and legacy: developing the evidence base for participatory approaches in health research

Abstract

Action research has been characterised as systematic enquiry into practice, undertaken by those involved, with the aim changing and improving that practice: an approach designed to have impact. Whilst much has been written about the process and practice of ‘researching’, historically ‘impact’ has been somewhat taken for granted. In recent years, however, the impact of all forms of research has become the focus of interest with many funding bodies now demanding that researchers not only articulate the prospective impact of their work, but what kinds of evidence will be proffered to demonstrate that impact. This has raised questions for action researchers, not about whether their work has an impact, but what form that impact takes, how it is recognised and by whom. This paper focuses on difficulties researchers find in both articulating the impact of participatory research and demonstrating links between such forms of research and impact. We draw on discussions about the notion of impact with authors that have self-reported and published their work as participatory. These discussions revealed that not only were there difficulties in clarifying the participatory dimension of their research but that whilst authors were able to discuss particular impacts of their work, articulating and evidencing that impact was often absent from their published papers. This paper offers insights into some of issues and barriers those who undertake participatory research face in explicating, for the external audience (and indeed sometimes for ourselves), the impact of this action-based form of enquiry.

Keywords:

• Impact
• participatory health research
• action research
• interactive knowledgebase

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

This work was supported by the Joint Information Systems Committee and National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all the authors for so readily participating in this work and particularly for the open way in which they discussed not only their achievements, but their perception of issues to be addressed, to allow us all to learn together.

Notes

1. We are looking here at research approaches that are most commonly found in health research, but other terms are found in other disciplines (e.g. Inclusive Research, Design Research) that also denote more radical forms of participation.

2. For the purposes of this paper we refer to the more radical forms of research collectively as participatory research (PR).

3. Focussing on PHR aligned us with the work of the International Collaboration on Participatory Health Research (ICPHR), a network of active participatory researchers seeking to bring together systematically the knowledge and experience of participatory health research and to strengthen PHR regarding issues of quality, credibility and impact on policy and practice.

4. Our initial plan had included follow up conversations with researchers from the identified projects beyond the main authors, particularly community-based researchers, but this proved not to be feasible in practice due to time constraints of a six month project and the limited budget for the work.

5. We have used the term ‘co-researcher’ to support a clearer narrative, but recognise the conceptual inconsistency of using this term. In practice, the term ‘researcher’ should be applied to all.