Researchers Attitudes to Public Involvement in Health Research

1
Researchers Attitudes to Public Involvement in
Health Research

• Jill Thompson Jonathan Boote
• Rosemary Barber Chris Armitage
• Cindy Cooper Georgina Jones
• Paul Ward

2
Why?

• Difference between rhetoric and reality
• Understanding health researchers attitudes may
  help to explain why policy is not more
  widespread.
• Directions for the future.

3
How?

• 15 semi-structured interviews
• University Researchers
• Health Research Clinical Trials, Health Services
  Research and Biomedical Science

4
Findings
5
Competing Constructions

• Co-researchers
• Public engagement
• By proxy
• Well, I mean Im a GP so I am sitting listening
  to what patients are telling me every day.
• (Health Service Researcher 7)

6
Apprehension

• Fear of the unknown
• Its a different way of working. Its
  uncomfortable to move out of your set ways.
• (Health Service Researcher 3)
• youre not quite sure what the threat is, but
  suddenly you feel exposed, you were hiding behind
  your title or your authority
• (Health Service Researcher 1)

7

• Threat to professional skills and academic
  knowledge
• I think there is definitely a thing about people
  feeling slightly threatened, researchers feeling
  threatened in terms of their own expertise and
  skills.
• (Health Service Researcher 4)
• and suddenly they are the experts and they have
  done no studying, no qualifications and I think
  that she feels a bit kind of like, thats not
  right.
• (Health Service Researcher 8)

8
Belief Differences

• there may be conflicting interests where the
  patient agenda differs very much from perhaps
  what the clinicians, in some senses may want to
  look at.
• (Health Service Researcher 3)
• patients will by definition often bring their
  own personalised agenda.
• (Clinical Trials 1)

9
Appropriate People

• Representativeness
• I also think that it is very difficult to find a
  member of the public who are truly representative
  of their communities and the public.
• (Health Service Researcher 10)
• Professional Patient
• theres an argument about when service users go
  from, become professionalised, thats the
  problem of losing your grass roots credibility.
• (Health Service Researcher 2)

10
Value

• Validation
• It makes it better because they could get
  information that we couldnt nearly so easily.
• (Health Service Researcher 3)
• Transparency
• Unique point of view

11
Ethical Obligation

• Tax
• ..its their money in terms of taxes
• (Health Service Researcher 6)
• Targeted towards need
• I would hope that it would produce better
  resaerch, research that is more relevant and more
  pertinent to peoples real needs
• (Health Service Researcher 4)

12
Political Imperative

• Funding, governance and ethics applications
• Ticking boxes?
• there is a lot of lip service paid to this and
  erm, I dont think that very often genuine
  attempts to, almost like ticking the box if you
  like. Have you involved the public? Yes
• (Health Service Researcher 9)

13
Concluding thoughts

• Does service user involvement challenge our ideas
  about valid and acceptable knowledge?
• Is research governance effective in promoting
  public involvement in research?
• The way forward?