Researching with Older People: Approaches and Experiences

1
Researching with Older People Approaches and
Experiences

• Marian Barnes, Kate Davies,
• Beatrice Gahagan, Buzz Harrison
• and Lizzie Ward

2
Cheers!? A project about older people and alcohol

• The steering group - no single driver

3
The research aims

• Begin to fill a gap in research into alcohol and
  older people
• Emphasise the importance of older people as
  interpreters of their own lives
• Place the experience of older people at the
  centre
• Develop the skills of a team of older people who
  could work on subsequent projects
• Develop and build good practice in this type of
  research

4
The process in our research

• Role of experience - a key element
• Valuing the co-researchers and reference group in
  terms of their knowledge and experience as equal
  partners
• Approaching a sensitive topic!
• Enabling older people to tell their stories in
  relation to alcohol in a non prescriptive way
• Open reflection on the process continued to
  inform the research

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Open enough to be collaborative structured
enough to be ethical

• An inherited framework of working -  older
  people invited to take part in something already
  set out within a volunteering and partnership
  structure
• Older people recruited to be co- researchers
  and reference group members via Age Concern,
  using policies and procedures of both AC and U of
  B
• Collaborative approach to training and research
  design enabled co-researchers to bring into the
  foreground their own specific strengths and areas
  of expertise
• Breaking down barriers between expert knowledge
  and lay knowledge, and encouraging mutual
  recognition, sharing and validating of different
  areas of expertise
• Enabled university to access older people much
  more easily and involve them without having
  system of its own to do so

6
What were the challenges?

• For Age Concern
• Change to normal volunteer practice/relationship
  s
• Shared responsibility
• Process of trusting in people to do things their
  own way
• More opportunity and flexibility to explore/
  create the project
• For University
• Power sharing
• Dialogue
• Practicalities
• For co-researchers
• Recognising you are wearing a different hat
• Using existing skills in a different way

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What were the results?

• Formal report
• important for steering group partners
• Relationships
• Collaborative working no one partner would have
  been able to do the project on their own
• Our reflections
• The links between the approach and the topic
  -researching a sensitive subject with people with
  little voice and the possibility of doing more!
• The knowledge, experience and understanding of
  older people integral to the research design
  creating an opportunity for learning and using
  their experience

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Growing older, being heard mature citizens,
consultation and participation
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Aims

• A better understanding of the needs of older
  people in the Meridian area.
• Better understanding of these needs on the part
  of those who make policies and deliver services
  that affect older people in the area.
• A better understanding of the way in which older
  people might be able to contribute to decision
  making in East Sussex.
• Learning between students at the University of
  Sussex and members of the Meridian Mature
  Citizens Forum.
• To make the Meridian Mature Citizens Forum more
  effective in speaking out for older people.

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The project team

• Meridian Mature Citizens Kate Davies, Gill Hart,
  Eileen Wood, Margaret Whiting
• Academics Buzz Harrison (Sussex) and Marian
  Barnes (Brighton)
• Sussex Anthropology students Eve Mundy and Chloe
  Wincott McGrath

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Process

• 61 interviews
• Paired teams of a student plus a forum member
• Findings about growing old, practical needs and
  being heard
• Findings circulated locally and across the county

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Reflecting on the process

• Shaping the agenda
• Time pressures and getting the job done
• Issues of control and ownership

13
Reflecting on different ways of researching
together
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Why involve older people in research

• To produce research that is relevant and
  important to older people
• To understand what ageing means to older people
• To ensure research has a bigger impact
• To develop skills amongst older people
• To challenge ageist assumptions
• To help older people campaign
• From Barnes, M and Taylor, S (2007) Involving
  Older People in Research examples, purposes and
  good practice, ERA-AGE European Research Area in
  Ageing Research
• http//era-age.group.shef.ac.uk/downloads/document
  _266.pdf

15
Other older people?

• The people we are becoming
• People with lots of experience
• Not necessarily deprived or excluded
• What do they want from this?
• What do they want from us?

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Roles and expectations

• No assumption in the Cheers project that older
  people owned the research.
• What then were motivations general interest,
  skills development rather than campaigning for
  the Meridian Forum.
• Time to learn/develop because less of a
  campaigning imperative?
• Active subjects what difference does it make to
  them if the interviewer is a similar age?

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Relationships

• In both cases academics drove the research design
  and process. Is that a problem?
• Two way (at least) learning? Practice, skills,
  but what about theory?
• Researchers, students, other agencies, peer
  researchers, active subjects.

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And finally..

• The relationships continue, we continue to work
  on this.