Participatory research: real or imagined

Abstract

BackgroundParticipatory research has as a central tenet that power relations between researcher and researched be reduced. In the last 20 years, a substantial literature has demonstrated the difficulties inherent in this as well as the troublesome nature of certain central concepts.Aims(1) To describe and illustrate a new form of participatory research where the researchers share at least something with the participants in the research. That is, all are users of mental health services. (2) To reflect on the novel form of participatory research in terms of whether it shares, mitigates or avoids some of the difficulties of more traditional forms and to pose the question: what is a mental health community?ResultsThe model described is new in that the researchers have a different status than in conventional participatory research. But it is illuminated by and itself illuminates issues of power relations in research and difficulties in reducing that; gatekeepers and the exclusion of crucial groups of service users; the confusion of demographic representativeness with the silencing of marginalized perspectives; coming out of the academic space and the shifting issue of what counts as ‘communities’ in mental health.ConclusionThe examples given are moderate in scale and relevant to social psychiatry. Yet they may change methods and the definition of participatory research and at the same time be vitiated by but also illuminate dilemmas already identified in the literature albeit in different formations.

Power Dynamics in Community-Based Participatory Research: A Multiple–Case Study Analysis of Partnering Contexts, Histories, and Practices

“…How power is exercised structurally and relationally by partners in response to these multiple forms of oppressions, therefore, becomes fundamental to a CBPR partnership (Gaventa & Cornwall, 2015). From early recognition of the continuum of participation, that is, manipulation through citizen control (Arnstein, 1969), CBPR practitioners have sought to create partnerships based on “equal power relations.” Yet this phrase poses a serious challenge, with the potential for tokenistic or imaginary equality if systems of privilege are not carefully analyzed (Rose, 2018). Implicit bias, for example, masks institutional hierarchies within research, for example, when academics promote evidence-based interventions as the preferred funding strategy.…”

The Challenges and Opportunities of Energy-Flexible Factories: A Holistic Case Study of the Model Region Augsburg in Germany

“…If they do not properly analyze their potential stakeholders, they risk ignoring their respective resources, needs and interests, such as schedules, competing actors or power relations. One of the founding principles of participatory research is that "it should level the power relations between researchers and the community in the research itself: in who sets the research agenda, who drives the research process and governs it and who interprets information" [48]. In order to reflect on these power relations, it is not only necessary to analyze the potential stakeholders and to speak and listen to them, but also to reflect on possible biases in the research team itself and in project government (access to knowledge and project insides, e.g., confidentiality agreements).…”

Measuring the impact of participatory research in psychiatry: How the search for epistemic justifications obscures ethical considerations

“…As Rose has described it, 'one of the founding principles of participatory research.. is that it should level the power relations between researchers and the community in the research itself'. 41 This responds to the ethical justifications for participatory research more than the epistemic ones, suggesting that sharing power will be central to an appropriate response to the ethical reasons for involvement. In a related discussion of how mental health research could be transformed through service user involvment, Jones et al, drawing on Foucault, offer this description of power:…”