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The British Journal of Psychiatry (2002) 181: 468-472
© 2002 The Royal College of Psychiatrists

REVIEW ARTICLE

From passive subjects to equal partners

Qualitative review of user involvement in research

PREMILA TRIVEDI, PGCE

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TIL WYKES, PhD

Service User Research Enterprise, Institute of Psychiatry, London, UK

Correspondence: Professor Til Wykes, Department of Psychology, Institute of Psychiatry, De Crespigny Park, Denmark Hill, London SE5 8AF, UK

Declaration of interest None.

Note: This contract is essentially between the clinical research team and Communicate so that if problems arise during the partnership research for individuals they have constituencies to go back to for support and guidance.

Section 4 may also include a statement about what will happen if the user becomes (or is perceived as becoming) ‘ill’ during the research, so for example users will only be referred to their clinical team if that has been previously agreed.

Background The Department of Health and UK funding bodies have suggested that clinical academics work closely with mental health service users in research projects. Although there are helpful guidelines on the issues that have to be dealt with, there have been few examples of how this partnership research might be undertaken.

Aims To illustrate the challenges in joint research projects.

Method We subjected the process of user involvement to ten questions which arose in the development of a joint research project. The answers are an amalgamation of the user and clinical researcher considerations and are affected by hindsight.

Results The involvement of the user-researcher changed the focus of the study and its design and content. More attention was paid to the intervention itself and the way in which it was delivered. This process increased the amount of time taken to carry out and write up the project as well as incurring financial costs for user consultation payments and dissemination.

Conclusions This experience has clarified the contribution that users can make, for example by raising new research questions, by ensuring interventions are kept ‘user friendly’, and the selection of outcome measures.

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Highlights of this issue

ELIZABETH WALSH
BJP 2002 181: 0. [Full Text]  

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