Fulfilling Lives South East - Creating our research together

By Kerry Dowding, Research and Evaluation Officer, BHT Fulfilling Lives 

In our project we have a team of peer researchers, who are volunteers and paid staff with lived experience of multiple and complex needs. They interview clients once a year, to gather feedback and input about the project. 

The problem? 

The researchers told us that some of the questions didn’t make sense to them or the clients, and as a result, the quality of feedback we were getting could be quite variable. We decided to co-produce a new version of the survey, with everyone’s input. 

The solution...

We started from scratch by asking staff and volunteers at all levels of the project what they would like to know from our clients. A selection of questions were drafted from these topics, reflecting everyone’s input equally, and covering a range of issues. We finally went back to the peer researchers (those in our project who have lived experiences and would be conducting the surveys) to ask about how to word the questions in a way that was clear, approachable and non-stigmatising. 

Co-produced survey

The feedback from clients, interviewers and staff has been incredibly positive since we co-produced the new survey as a team. Clients now understand all the questions properly, and interviewers feel much more confident using a survey they helped to create. From a research perspective, this means the depth and quality of information is much improved, and more useful to a wider range of people within the organisation. 

And it was all done using co-production. 

South East project