Research involvement: moving from tokenistic to meaningful

Research funders and universities are increasingly placing emphasis on the importance of public engagement in science and research involvement. Public involvement in research has moved from something initially heralded as a good thing to do, to a prerequisite for funding success particularly within the applied sciences including health and care research. If you are new to research involvement, or have been wondering about how to the put the UK Standards for Public Involvement in Research into practice, or imagined you could simply tick the research involvement box (which you can’t).

At the Alzheimer Scotland Centre for Policy and Practice at UWS, we have been working with people with lived experience of dementia to develop best practice approaches to research involvement. We will show you the funny and serious side of dementia research involvement. With illustrative best practice films of what worked well and confessions about the things that could have worked well if only we had thought of…well you need to come along to hear the rest of our story. An open discussion about workshop participants’ own research involvement triumphs and challenges will allow us to developed a shared understanding about how to promote meaningful research involvement – both for those we are involving and for ourselves as researchers