Engaging with Participants and Stakeholders across the Research Process

This training will introduce PGR students to the challenges, rewards and considerations needed when working with participants and stakeholders across the research journey. To create data and have impact the relationships we as researchers create and maintain with the people we work with, participants, gatekeepers and stakeholders, are vital and often the key to a project’s success. This training will cover:

• Stakeholder engagement and relationship building and maintaining;
• Participants recruitment and relationships;
• Negotiating organisational access;
• Delivering difficult messages;
• Impact work;
• Ethics and power in working with participants, stakeholders and communities.

Outcomes

Through this training, participants will:

• Identify the key relationships they need to build and maintain for a research project and the timeline associated with this;
• Understand the possible challenges of working with people and how to plan for these;
• Establish an understanding of the ethical implications of the decisions we make in how we work with and include others in our research (participants and stakeholders);
• Evaluate and plan effective recruitment strategies;
• Have knowledge of engagement and relationship building techniques, including gaining access to organisations;
• Understand strategies for working with stakeholders to develop impact and build relationships for future research;
• Learn techniques for delivering difficult messages to stakeholders and organisations we work with.

Contributors

Dr Abigail Tazzyman is a lecturer in Qualitative research at the Sheffield Methods Institute in the School of Education at the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on the intersection between organisation studies, inequalities and medical sociology/health services research.