There is current taste for research co-production across disciplines, sectors, populations of interest and geographies, as well as co-production applied to policy, service design and implementation. This collaborative-relational research practice is boldly claimed to enhance research quality, produce findings that are more resonant and useful, and democratise knowledge, unsettling traditional knowledge relations. Some of these claims speak to improvements within current knowledge systems, while others implicate bolder re-imaginings of what research can be and do.
My work sits in the tension between this promise and the felt experience of many people who are co-producing that this approach ‘works’; and a comparative lack of formal evidence supporting the outcomes or impacts. This apparent lack of evidence interacts first with a want of conceptual clarity and distinction, from other traditions of public and cultural participation, and participatory research. And second, it interacts with the challenges of evaluating co-production, as a complex and emergent process. Concerns over lack of evidence may relate to how different kinds of ‘evidence’, knowledge and knowing are valued and respected as such – or not. The evidence question matters because it relates to justifying the spaces, time and resources required by this kind of work. The question carries real world consequences.
These unresolved issues form the canvas for my work, which adopts a value-critical stance to explore a number of questions in the Scottish context. What shapes people’s journeys to co-producing research? How do they interpret and enact it in light of those situated journeys? Relatedly, how is the value of co-producing research framed and understood by different actors? These questions intend to trouble research co-production by revealing multiple perspectives (including those which are lesser-heard) on how it creates value for them or otherwise, considering the potential for value pluralism, conflict and fluidity.
The study proceeds from a constructivist paradigm, featuring multi-modal, qualitative inquiry. It will experiment with the affordances of creative research methods for probing beyond familiar narratives and lines. While study of research co-production is more adequately covered by case-based methods within existing literature, this research will offer a timely and relevant opportunity for dialogue through empirical work across-and-in-between individual cases.
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Helen Berry is a PhD candidate in Social Policy at the University of Edinburgh, supported by the Binks Hub PhD Studentship. Her research is supervised by Dr Emma Davidson and Dr Hayley Bennett. Before beginning her PhD, Helen worked with third and public sector organisations in Scotland in wide-ranging roles, including monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL), applied research and policy. She has long-standing interests in involvement, participation and co-production.
You can find out more about Helen and her previous work here or connect with Helen on LinkedIn.
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