Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Preface and acknowledgements
- one Sociology and survivor research: an introduction
- two Mental health service users’ experiences and epistemological fallacy
- three Doing good carer-led research: reflecting on ‘Past Caring’ methodology
- four Theorising service user involvement from a researcher perspective
- five How does who we are shape the knowledge we produce? Doing collaborative research about personality disorders
- six Where do service users’ knowledges sit in relation to professional and academic understandings of knowledge?
- seven Recognition politics as a human rights perspective on service users’ experiences of involvement in mental health services
- eight Theorising a social model of ‘alcoholism’: service users who misbehave
- nine “Hard to reach”? Racialised groups and mental health service user involvement
- ten Individual narratives and collective knowledge: capturing lesbian, gay and bisexual service user experiences
- eleven Alternative futures for service user involvement in research
- twelve Brief reflections
- Appendix Details of the seminar series
- Index
five - How does who we are shape the knowledge we produce? Doing collaborative research about personality disorders
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 February 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Preface and acknowledgements
- one Sociology and survivor research: an introduction
- two Mental health service users’ experiences and epistemological fallacy
- three Doing good carer-led research: reflecting on ‘Past Caring’ methodology
- four Theorising service user involvement from a researcher perspective
- five How does who we are shape the knowledge we produce? Doing collaborative research about personality disorders
- six Where do service users’ knowledges sit in relation to professional and academic understandings of knowledge?
- seven Recognition politics as a human rights perspective on service users’ experiences of involvement in mental health services
- eight Theorising a social model of ‘alcoholism’: service users who misbehave
- nine “Hard to reach”? Racialised groups and mental health service user involvement
- ten Individual narratives and collective knowledge: capturing lesbian, gay and bisexual service user experiences
- eleven Alternative futures for service user involvement in research
- twelve Brief reflections
- Appendix Details of the seminar series
- Index
Summary
Introduction
A strong tradition of involving people with lived experiences of using mental health services as active members of research teams has emerged over the last two decades. This has focused on adding the voice of personal experience to the research process and on introducing the idea of ‘service user- or survivor-produced knowledge’ (Sweeney et al, 2009). However, the epistemological value of these new means of knowledge production continues to be evaluated alongside the ‘gold standard’ of university-produced clinical-academic research about mental health (Staley, 2009). Parallel developments in the philosophy of science have introduced the concept of ‘co-produced’ knowledge, where the inclusion of research partners from outside of the university questions the university's monopoly as the arbiter of ‘good science’ (Gibbons et al, 1994). All knowledge is held to be socially accountable, and all research voices – not just the new lay arrivals – are placed on the same critical plane (Nowotny et al, 2001).
Understanding the contribution of service user researchers to mental health research becomes not just a question of ‘What difference do they make?’ but an interrogation of how who we all are, as academics, clinicians and service users, shapes the knowledge we produce. Efforts have been made to measure the extent to which researchers with different backgrounds – service user researchers and ‘conventional’ university researchers – do mental health research differently, both in the collection and analysis of interview data (Gillard et al, 2010; Rose et al, 2011). In other research, we have attempted to capture the different sense we make of our data – the different analytical narratives we produce as service user, clinical and university researchers – and how we have endeavoured to co-produce a joint narrative through a collaborative research process (Gillard et al, 2011). In this chapter, we aim to illustrate and interrogate further this collaborative research process, focusing on the analysis of qualitative interview data, in order to explore at the level of research team practice how who we are shapes the knowledge we produce.
The research project
In this chapter, we will consider a research project entitled ‘Understanding personality disorders and recovery’, commissioned by a peer-led organisation that provides personality disorders services and is an active partner in the development of personality disorders policy in the UK.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Mental Health Service Users in ResearchCritical Sociological Perspectives, pp. 53 - 68Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2013