On Being the Conduit: Lived Experience Involvement in Research across Contexts and Perspectives

Introduction 

At a time when co-production has become a ‘buzzword’ in research and service user involvement is becoming an expected and integral part of research grant and ethics applications it is, based on my experiences and the literature, important that we work to retain the meaning of co-production, how it differs from lived experience involvement and understand and remain connected to its emancipatory roots.

 

Methods 

My work reflects on co-production and lived-experience involvement from the multiple perspectives I have personally brought across time and contexts.  Firstly, as an advisory group member, service user researcher and lived experience co-applicant then as a research assistant where others provided lived experience that I don’t personally have and latterly as the programme manager on a co-produced randomised controlled trial.  As the programme manager I personally have both lived and methodological experience and my role requires me to hold these with awareness of equity and power dynamics.

 

Results 

My work highlights the contextual differences in co-production environments and how one size does not fit all when it comes to co-produced work. In the process of writing the publications that form my thesis, reading, discussing with colleagues, and developing my thoughts around co-production and definition I have considered and discussed ideas around creating a typology of collaboration or guidelines for peer review. I concluded, however, that collaboration is context dependent.

  

Discussion-conclusion 

My conclusion is that possibly the best way that we can hold ourselves to account as a research community currently is to define our collaboration strategy before our work begins and then reflect on how our own aims have or have not been met in order to create accountability, reflexivity, and a push for mutual learning around co-production within the collaborative research community.