‘Learning and growing together’: exploring consumer partnerships in a PhD, an ethnographic study

BACKGROUND: Consumer and community involvement (CCI) in health research is increasingly recognised as best practice and is closely linked with calls for epistemic justice and more transparent university collaborations with consumers. Given doctoral candidates play a key role in the future of co-prod...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Cox, Ruth, Molineux, Matthew, Kendall, Melissa, Tanner, Bernadette, Miller, Elizabeth
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10014401/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36918951
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40900-023-00417-6
_version_ 1784906987535859712
author Cox, Ruth
Molineux, Matthew
Kendall, Melissa
Tanner, Bernadette
Miller, Elizabeth
author_facet Cox, Ruth
Molineux, Matthew
Kendall, Melissa
Tanner, Bernadette
Miller, Elizabeth
author_sort Cox, Ruth
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Consumer and community involvement (CCI) in health research is increasingly recognised as best practice and is closely linked with calls for epistemic justice and more transparent university collaborations with consumers. Given doctoral candidates play a key role in the future of co-production, examination of consumer partnerships in PhDs is important. This study aimed to describe and evaluate consumer partnerships in a PhD from the perspective of the consumer co-researchers, the PhD candidate, and the academic supervisors including optimal approaches, impacts, and benefits and challenges. METHODS: This prospective, co-produced ethnographic study was conducted over 33 months. Data collection included field notes, a monthly online log of partnership experiences and time spent, interviews or a focus group every six months, and a PhD student reflexive diary. Qualitative data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. RESULTS: The student, two academics, and four consumer co-researchers were involved. A mean of 11.10 h per month were spent on CCI. The student spent the most time (mean 15.86 h per month). Preparation for dissemination of findings was the most frequent partnership activity. The two overarching themes emphasised that a PhD promotes a rich partnership ethos with the student at the centre and that the partnership was a worthwhile but challenging process. The four sub-themes highlighted that developing a collegial and supportive environment with regular meetings combined with a multi-faceted and responsive co-learning approach were core to success. Additionally, there were benefits for individuals, research processes and outcomes, and for driving change in consumer-academic research partnerships. Recruiting to and forming the partnership, maintaining the collaboration through inevitable changes and challenges, and an ethical and supportive closure of the research team were critical. CONCLUSIONS: This longitudinal ethnographic study demonstrated that doctoral research can create a rich ethos for research and knowledge co-production which evolved over time. Equalising power dynamics through relationship building and co-learning was critical. Additionally, a focus on supportively ending the partnership was essential, and CCI may reduce PhD student isolation and procrastination. Enhanced university incentivisation of co-production in health research is recommended to address gaps in consumer remuneration and student support. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40900-023-00417-6.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-10014401
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2023
publisher BioMed Central
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-100144012023-03-15 ‘Learning and growing together’: exploring consumer partnerships in a PhD, an ethnographic study Cox, Ruth Molineux, Matthew Kendall, Melissa Tanner, Bernadette Miller, Elizabeth Res Involv Engagem Research BACKGROUND: Consumer and community involvement (CCI) in health research is increasingly recognised as best practice and is closely linked with calls for epistemic justice and more transparent university collaborations with consumers. Given doctoral candidates play a key role in the future of co-production, examination of consumer partnerships in PhDs is important. This study aimed to describe and evaluate consumer partnerships in a PhD from the perspective of the consumer co-researchers, the PhD candidate, and the academic supervisors including optimal approaches, impacts, and benefits and challenges. METHODS: This prospective, co-produced ethnographic study was conducted over 33 months. Data collection included field notes, a monthly online log of partnership experiences and time spent, interviews or a focus group every six months, and a PhD student reflexive diary. Qualitative data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. RESULTS: The student, two academics, and four consumer co-researchers were involved. A mean of 11.10 h per month were spent on CCI. The student spent the most time (mean 15.86 h per month). Preparation for dissemination of findings was the most frequent partnership activity. The two overarching themes emphasised that a PhD promotes a rich partnership ethos with the student at the centre and that the partnership was a worthwhile but challenging process. The four sub-themes highlighted that developing a collegial and supportive environment with regular meetings combined with a multi-faceted and responsive co-learning approach were core to success. Additionally, there were benefits for individuals, research processes and outcomes, and for driving change in consumer-academic research partnerships. Recruiting to and forming the partnership, maintaining the collaboration through inevitable changes and challenges, and an ethical and supportive closure of the research team were critical. CONCLUSIONS: This longitudinal ethnographic study demonstrated that doctoral research can create a rich ethos for research and knowledge co-production which evolved over time. Equalising power dynamics through relationship building and co-learning was critical. Additionally, a focus on supportively ending the partnership was essential, and CCI may reduce PhD student isolation and procrastination. Enhanced university incentivisation of co-production in health research is recommended to address gaps in consumer remuneration and student support. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40900-023-00417-6. BioMed Central 2023-03-15 /pmc/articles/PMC10014401/ /pubmed/36918951 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40900-023-00417-6 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Cox, Ruth
Molineux, Matthew
Kendall, Melissa
Tanner, Bernadette
Miller, Elizabeth
‘Learning and growing together’: exploring consumer partnerships in a PhD, an ethnographic study
title ‘Learning and growing together’: exploring consumer partnerships in a PhD, an ethnographic study
title_full ‘Learning and growing together’: exploring consumer partnerships in a PhD, an ethnographic study
title_fullStr ‘Learning and growing together’: exploring consumer partnerships in a PhD, an ethnographic study
title_full_unstemmed ‘Learning and growing together’: exploring consumer partnerships in a PhD, an ethnographic study
title_short ‘Learning and growing together’: exploring consumer partnerships in a PhD, an ethnographic study
title_sort ‘learning and growing together’: exploring consumer partnerships in a phd, an ethnographic study
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10014401/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36918951
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40900-023-00417-6
work_keys_str_mv AT coxruth learningandgrowingtogetherexploringconsumerpartnershipsinaphdanethnographicstudy
AT molineuxmatthew learningandgrowingtogetherexploringconsumerpartnershipsinaphdanethnographicstudy
AT kendallmelissa learningandgrowingtogetherexploringconsumerpartnershipsinaphdanethnographicstudy
AT tannerbernadette learningandgrowingtogetherexploringconsumerpartnershipsinaphdanethnographicstudy
AT millerelizabeth learningandgrowingtogetherexploringconsumerpartnershipsinaphdanethnographicstudy