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I’ve drawn on what I’ve learned from hundreds of hours of training and fieldwork with peer researchers to offer you a set of questions and prompts to help you to prepare for fieldwork.

Perhaps use these as journaling prompts and find a space to reflect on the things that come up for you.

You might like to work through some of these questions as a research group, to help offer a gentle steer as you develop a project together.

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Think about creative methods, a photo walk, participants keeping a journal, creative workshops where you make something together, a paper prototype... 

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Think about creative methods, a photo walk, participants keeping a journal, creative workshops where you make something together, a paper prototype... 

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I have found peer research to be hugely enriching and working on peer research projects has increased my general research skills and my facilitation skills.  It has also at times been challenging, there have been times of rupture and of repair. There have been times when I have asked whether I am the right person to be doing this work.

I have encouraged myself and peer researchers and people connected to the research to trust the process, whilst also myself feeling on a journey without a map!

This resource attempts to surface some of the challenges and offer a starting point as you go on your journey!

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What do you want to explore?

(Remember you may refine your research question after you spend some time with peer researchers and experts through experience, even better they may be setting the agenda so you could use this space to think about how you will support people to find out what they want to explore!)

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How could peer research help you to explore this research question?

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How could peer research help you to explore this research question?

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What would a peer research approach add?

Is peer research the right approach for this project?

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Can you start with a micro-project to test out how things might work for a bigger project?  

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Can you start with a micro-project to test out how things might work for a bigger project?  

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Depending on your experience you may like to start small. What would that look like? A prototype? An experiment?

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What time do you have available to commit to involving people?

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What time do you have available to commit to involving people?

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Peer research can be time consuming, it is well worth taking the time to do it, make sure you can commit the time to do it well

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What practical things do you need to have in place?

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What practical things do you need to have in place?

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Think about whether you can pay people for their time.

What time commitment are you asking them for?

Where will you meet, and how often?

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Think about your own values, how you like to be treated and how you bring your values out in daily life.

Will you work as a group and explore your group values? This can be a nice way of starting to work up some ideas for how you will work together.

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Think about the role that power plays both inside and outside of research. How will you amplify the voices of those who do not have access to power?

How can peer research redress a power imbalance?

What thoughts do you have about how decisions will be made, about who decides?

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What are they?

Who can help you?

What resources can you use?

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What questions do you want to ask people, or what prompts might you use to help people to think about how they want to get involved?

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What questions do you want to ask people, or what prompts might you use to help people to think about how they want to get involved?

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You might ask about their skills, their interests, things that they would like to learn

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What are the key ethical considerations?

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What are the key ethical considerations?

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The safety and welfare of peer researchers is extremely important. Are you affiliated with an institution which requires you to complete an ethical review process? Have you factored in decision maker's time scales?

What ethical, legal or data protections considerations are needed? You might like to do some reading of other researcher's ethics statements or policies as a guide.

If you are working independently will you put your own ethical review process in place? Will you build in any risk assessment?

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Is there space for creativity?

Whilst surveys and interviews can be effective methods for peer research projects there is a world of creative and artistic approaches at your fingertips, spend some time reading about creative research methods, think about the skills and interests peer researchers bring, is there a way to bring these skills and assets out through creative practice?

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How will you recruit peer researchers? And participants?

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How will you recruit peer researchers? And participants?

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What access do you have to communities, organisations and other bodies who may play a part in the research?

How can a peer research approach help?

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Think about considerations you would make in any research project. And now think about how you will support peer researchers to record and to store data safely and securely.

How will data come in centrally as fieldwork gets underway? Will you need to put in place any data sharing protocols?

Will peer researchers need to have access to lockable storage or password protected area?

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How can peer researchers get involved in this?

What training can you offer?

Can you bring more of that micro-project thinking to this and start with a small experiment to analyse a chunk of data together?

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How will you look after yourself and attend to your own self care?

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How will you look after yourself and attend to your own self care?

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Taking a leading role in peer research can feel like a big responsibility, to the peer researchers, to the participants, to the wider community, to funders, it is important to look after yourself as well as the peer research team

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What opportunities can you offer to peer researchers?

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What opportunities can you offer to peer researchers?

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Think about training, mentoring, employment, making new connections

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How will you ensure that you look after people? That they feel comfortable?  How will you support peer researchers? 

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How will you ensure that you look after people? That they feel comfortable?  How will you support peer researchers? 

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Being involved as a peer researcher can be hard work and tiring. It can stir up feelings for people, think about what support and supervision you will offer.

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How will you agree ways of working together?

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How will you agree ways of working together?

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Will you co-produce some guiding principles for working together?

Think about how groups meet, will people be able to dip in and out of the project?

How will you make decisions and reach agreement about the best way forward?

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What is your budget?  How do you plan to allocate resources to involve people?  

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What is your budget?  How do you plan to allocate resources to involve people?  

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Resources can be tight and we don’t always have the budget we might want.

I have learned to ask for what I know will result in a good project, this has included providing food for peer researchers as we can’t work on empty stomachs, vouchers for participants, paying peer researchers for their time.

Think about what you need to do this well, and build in some contingency!

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How do you plan to reflect on how it is going?

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How do you plan to reflect on how it is going?

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Will you build in regular reflection? How will you do this? Will peer researchers be offered regular opportunities to reflect?

This might look like coming together to talk about what was interesting or surprising, or whether anything came up that may have influenced the responses that people gave.

People working in this field often talk about mis-steps, things that happen in the real world that we might not be prepared for, can you create a space to reflect on these and explore if there are things you might do differently in future?

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Would it be helpful to involve some other people in the research?

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Would it be helpful to involve some other people in the research?

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Perhaps you are interested in a subject that is not your area of expertise, would it be helpful to have a small steering group of people who can support you?

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Peer research brings additional considerations, it can be hard to get everyone together for meetings or things can come up which can derail timescales.

People have lives outside of the project and timescales and budgets may need to be flexible

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What considerations might you need to make about third parties?

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What considerations might you need to make about third parties?

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Is your research funded? Are you clear about any outcomes your funder is expecting to see? Do you need to do any groundwork with your funder? Perhaps they have had experience of funding or commissioning peer research before, if not you may want to spend time together exploring expectations, being clear that it is not a quick and predictable way of delivering research (and there are benefits to this!)

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How will you keep peer researchers informed about the impact of the work and how the findings are going to be used?

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How will you keep peer researchers informed about the impact of the work and how the findings are going to be used?

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How can peer researchers get involved in sharing their findings? How will you ensure that results and findings are shared in open and accessible formats?

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Is there an action that you hope to see coming out of the research?  Is there potential to have an impact on policy or positive change in communities?

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Is there an action that you hope to see coming out of the research?  Is there potential to have an impact on policy or positive change in communities?

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Think about who can support you so that your research has the best chance of having an impact.

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This could be informal or more formal, peer research is a growing but relatively under researched field, evaluation helps to grow the evidence base for peer research.

As well as thinking about the planned outcomes for the research what about the potential outcomes for peer researchers? Will you measure these?

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How will you celebrate at the end of the project?

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How will you celebrate at the end of the project?

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Working together should be fun! Where possible don’t wait until the end but celebrate lots of small milestones together.

It can be nice to come together at the end to reflect together, to share openly the successes and mis-steps and challenges and look back at how you worked together.

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Are there other opportunities you can connect peer researchers to?

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Are there other opportunities you can connect peer researchers to?

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When projects end it can feel sad, often we have spent lots of time together. Are there opportunities for future research? Possible employment opportunities?

Might the group want to continue to meet, even socially? Plan in time to explore these things together

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Do you have a sense of the busier and quieter times in the research process?  How can you help peer researchers to understand any wider processes that are happening around the research?

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Do you have a sense of the busier and quieter times in the research process?  How can you help peer researchers to understand any wider processes that are happening around the research?

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Sometimes there are quieter periods where not much activity is happening.

How will you keep in contact with people so that they don’t think the project has come to an abrupt end or feel disconnected?

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How can you build your own resilience as you continue on your journey?

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How can you build your own resilience as you continue on your journey?

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Bringing people together can be exciting and there can be a real buzz about the project. There can also be challenges, ruptured relationships, even conflict.

Think about times when you have handled this kind of thing, what have you done? What have others done?

What has gone well or is there anything you would do differently?

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I'm Ang Broadbridge a researcher experienced in the delivery of peer research and participatory research projects in the UK.

Peer research when planned and delivered thoughtfully with training and support offered to peer researchers can be an empowering experience leading to positive change.

This guide is designed to help you get started in peer research, though much of this content is also applicable to patient and public involvement and engagement work.

I use these questions to guide my work and encourage feedback to help me to improve this resource.

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I hope that this resource will be a helpful guide, I tend to work in a very iterative way so I may return to add to this or change it up as my own practice develops.

If you'd like to share thoughts with me you can email me Ange.Broadbridge@gmail.com and I will try to answer questions you might have