Introduction

Despite the considerable growth of interest in user participation in policy and service development and more recently research, the definition and meaning of participation is a contested and ideologically loaded concept (Braye, 2000). There remains considerable uncertainty as to what does or should constitute participation and what its purpose should be. While there may be significant agreement in the research community that the participation of older people in research is (at least in principle) a good thing, its potential remains significantly underdeveloped as do the complexities of participation. Who should, for example, benefit from research? To what extent should research impact be judged on its success in contributing to positive change for older women and men? What sort of criteria might be used to judge the success or otherwise, in older people's participation in research?

The potential for participation to become the ‘big idea’, which must be achieved at all costs, carries with it the risk of what Beresford (2003, p 1) has described as a “tick box approach to participation”. At its worst, a predominantly superficial approach to participation could trivialise or underplay both its complexities and potential. In reality, a critical and complete analysis of participation in research is absent. As it stands at present, this omission raises a range of complex issues for researchers and user participants within all areas of the research process (Beresford, 2003).

The aim of this chapter is to review critically some of the questions that surround the participation of older women and men in gerontological research. This discussion is set in the context of increased interest in participation across research, policy and practice. An engagement with democratic approaches to user participation in gerontological research has the potential to make progress in a number of areas that are of critical importance to older people. But changes in this direction would imply fundamental changes to, for example, traditional approaches to research; the ways in which research is organised; and the goals and aspirations for dissemination and action from research. The chapter begins by setting participation in research in the context of the wider drives towards citizen participation. The ways in which participation approaches are informed by different ideological positions are reviewed.