Doing Research Together

Many other documents on this website will tell you about why we think doing research in partnership is a good idea (see Why do partnership research?).

We also describe some of the difficult things about doing research in partnerships (see Partnerships: Questions and Challenges)

And some documents describe what it is like to work in this way (see Ricky talks about fieldwork and Steve talks about fieldwork).

In this document we talk more about making the decision to try to work in partnership. We also talk about an important idea - 'empowerment' - that you might like to think about if you are going to do research in partnership.

Working with 'service users' in research is not a new idea. Lots of people in the past have decided that it would be a good idea to work with people rather than do research on people. Much of this research invited people to join in after the research topic was decided. Usually the researchers already knew what they wanted to produce at the end of the research as well.

This type of research is not the same as the sort of partnership research we talk about on this website. This sort of partnership research involves working together on all stages of the research right from the beginning. If this is going to happen then researchers and service users need to develop new types of relationships.

Usually researchers are used to being in control of the research instead of sharing control. Some people say that what is needed is 'empowerment' of service users so that they can take part fully. 'Empowerment' is an idea that lots of people argue about. It means someone 'getting' more power than they have at the minute. Sometimes it is spoken about as if this is an easy thing to do. We do not believe it is an easy thing to do.

Very often, people with power do not want to give up their power. Sometimes they don't know how to share power. It is not something you can 'give' to someone else like a present. It can be very difficult for those with less power to get power. This is because of all the other things you may need (like a job, maybe, or experience of research, or the confidence to say certain things). Power does not exist in itself, it exists in relationships. For example, do people take your ideas seriously or not? If they do, you have a form of power.

One of the things we hope you will learn more about by looking at this website is 'empowerment'. We hope that you will see it is not an easy thing to do partnership research. But we also hope that you will think it is a good thing to try to do.