Service user involvement in research: panacea or pretence

2006 Conference

This presentation begins from an assumption that service users should be involved in research that evaluates the services they receive. The paper is based on working with young service users as co-researchers and other service user research projects.

The paper will identify the claimed benefits and potential costs of such research. The benefits include better targeting of questions, more user friendly language, and potential ease of access and increased likelihood of results being relevant. This is all achievable, but not without costs, these costs are often overlooked and may include resources, practical issues, the need for special arrangements – to be discussed in the session and the length of time taken to complete the project. Further consideration will also be given as to whether there are some research tasks that it is inappropriate to ask young service users to undertake e.g. interviewing others concerning child abuse or writing the research report and whether there are some research approaches that are too specialist to ask service user researchers to undertake.

From this it is intended to engage the audience with considering whether there are boundaries for service user research and the degrees of involvement that are appropriate at different stages. In so doing it is hoped to encourage a debate as to how we keep service user research honest, and avoid it becoming seen as either panacea or pretence.