3 December 2025
As part of our project to develop a co-production community of practice, team members from different organisations and sectors realised they had very different vocabularies when talking about co-producing research. In this blog they explore these differences and discuss how they overcame these language barriers.
Effective co-production is based on good relationships and trust, so as a team we spent time getting to know each other and establishing shared goals and priorities. We explored the terminology we used to describe ourselves, each other and the work we were doing.
There’s an array of terms to describe co-production and an equally vast vocabulary to describe community-based researchers. To check our shared understanding, we came up with a co-production glossary and each wrote down on Post-It notes what we understood the different words to mean. Interestingly, there was nearly universal agreement on the meaning of the terminology we looked at. In fact, the only disagreement was between the academics!
Reassured, we forged ahead, planning workshops, organising events and auditing training materials together.
Our collaboration has produced several outputs including an animation and an evaluation of existing training programmes. However, as the project progressed, differences in our understanding became evident through shared experience and conversation. We also continually examined and evaluated our assumptions and beliefs. Such awareness cannot easily be captured using flip chart paper and Post-It notes. Instead, it emerged iteratively.
Surprisingly, two of the most challenging terms we used were ‘research’ and ‘researcher’. During our initial Post-It note activity, we had all agreed, given a standard, dictionary-like definition of these terms and moved on. Job done.
However, in practice, such seemingly simple words were problematic. Our community-based colleagues wouldn’t have described themselves as ‘researchers’ even when involved in research-like activities.
Similarly, at stakeholder meetings and community events, community members repeatedly told us that they viewed ‘research’ with suspicion. They did not see themselves taking part in or conducting research, nor was it necessarily valued. We began to question whether describing what we were doing as ‘research’ presented cultural and social barriers we had not foreseen.
For many community colleagues, research continues to be viewed with suspicion, sadly often born from experience. For example, community members who invested time and energy into funding bids with academic partners felt their efforts were betrayed when bids failed.
Academics are accustomed to these knockbacks, but input from community members is potentially more personal. They felt let down and exploited when their contribution didn’t lead to a funded project.
At one event we asked attendees what research meant for them. Although there were some heartening responses, words such as ‘exploitation’ were disappointingly commonplace.
Such sentiment is not misplaced. From a researcher’s point of view, it may be easy to consign events such as Henrietta Lacks or the Tuskegee syphilis study to history. However, reports have pointed to systematically unfair treatment or exclusion of minoritised people from research. It wasn’t surprising to find a high degree of scepticism among community members.
We had thought the project would be about developing research capacity among community-based colleagues. We had planned to co-design training packages and support networks to allow academics and community-based colleagues to collaborate and support each other.
However, working alongside our partners, we realised we first needed to listen and better understand their perspectives. If we were going to speak the same language, we needed to look beyond shared definitions of words and move towards a shared cultural and social understanding of how those words were perceived. We needed to create space for a shared conversation that examined these issues and critically reflect on our own research practice, to re-build trust in the work we do.
So, what does this mean for us and our co-production community of practice? Well co-production is an iterative process that grows and develops through the interactions, conversations and shared decisions that feed it. Our stakeholder group have recognised that developing research capacity amongst community-based colleagues won’t happen if we only focus on training and supporting academic and community researchers.
We are therefore planning a wider piece of community engagement work to focus on why research is important, how it affects our daily lives and how it can change lives for the better. To develop a shared understanding, we need to talk to people in their communities about our work, to listen to and reflect on what they tell us. Move from ‘us’ and ‘them’ towards ‘we’ and ‘our’.