What do co-production, co-construction and collaboration mean in research? These types of research invite people with diverse perspectives and types of expertise to the research table as genuine partners. Everyone at the table is engaged in ongoing dialogue to develop knowledge through research. These approaches challenge the types of expertise and methods that are required to produce knowledge that makes a difference and improves people’s lives. Including those for whom the research matters, and inclusion in a way that extends beyond tokenistic consultation, is central to these approaches. Despite the potential benefits there is a limited uptake of these research approaches in the mental health sector or in the exploration of the lives of people who negotiate mental ill-health and distress. How can co-produced, co-constructed or collaborative research be designed and conducted in ways that are authentic, address pressing real-world issues, achievable, fundable, respectful of all partners, have broad credibility, and with real impacts for the people whom the research is about?
This workshop aims to foster a space for thinking, talking, imagining and planning research that draws on multiple types of expertise. There are no set rules or recipes for co-produced, co-constructed or collaborative research but there are principles that optimise successful experiences. Many examples of successful collaborative research partnerships have generated learning that informs these principles.
The workshop will draw on three examples of co-constructed research that have occurred over the past 30 years in Victoria. The highly influential Understanding and Involvement (U & I) Project at Royal Park Hospital (2001), and the Participating Lives Project (2009), will be described, alongside a current co-produced project exploring postsecondary study participation. These examples will showcase the approaches used to create research partnerships and reflect on the learning that resulted. Discussion will illuminate the principles underlying these partnerships, how the research was framed, designed, conducted, and disseminated, and the experience of the research partners.
Participants will have the opportunity to reflect on what effective co-construction, co-production and collaboration looks like and factors that make it effective. There will be space to air and debate challenges to initiating and sustaining these approaches. Participants will leave having commenced conversations about research approaches and partnerships to address current pressing issues; an exploration around what the issues are, how can they be understood and addressed, and how we might make it happen together.