Series: Public engagement with research. Part 3: Sharing power and building trust through partnering with communities in primary care research.

Background: This article focuses on potential strategies to support primary care researchers in working in partnership with the public and healthcare professionals. Partnership working can potentially to improve the relevance and usefulness of research and ensure better research and health outcomes.

Discussion: We describe what we mean by partnership working and the importance of reflecting on power and building trusting relationships.

Patient involvement in clinical trials.

Clinical trials are required to ensure new treatments are safe and effective for patients. The involvement of participants in the planning and execution of clinical trials is critical not only to their success but also so that the participating communities can benefit from them.

What Does "Good" Community and Public Engagement Look Like? Developing Relationships With Community Members in Global Health Research.

Community and public engagement (CPE) is increasingly becoming a key component in global health research. The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) is one of the leading funders in the UK of global health research and requires a robust CPE element in the research it funds, along with CPE monitoring and evaluation. But what does "good" CPE look like? And what factors facilitate or inhibit good CPE? Addressing these questions would help ensure clarity of expectations of award holders, and inform effective monitoring frameworks and the development of guidance.

Co-production: a kind revolution.

Carnegie UK (CUK) and National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) INVOLVE held a meeting on the co-production of research, how we work together on equal terms. We brought together public contributors and individuals from organisations focused on research. We wanted to discuss how co-production could work in research, how it could be seen as business as usual, and to think through the barriers that stop us from working together, as well as the things that can help us move forward.

Effective engagement and involvement with community stakeholders in the co-production of global health research.

argue that small changes as well as larger system-wide changes can strengthen citizens’ contribution to knowledge in health research

Dementia informal caregiver obtaining and engaging in food-related information and support services.

As dementia progresses, caregivers increasingly have to manage the decline of food-related abilities with little outside information or input from support services The provision of food coping skills and knowledge can lessen the burden on caregivers. However, there is little research on caregivers' perspectives on food-related services. This paper reports on a qualitative study to investigate informal caregivers' experiences of, and views on, food-related information and support services in dementia.

Reaching a consensus on service-user involvement in courses for professionals.

Aim: To describe how a workshop that used a modified nominal group technique (NGT) was used at the end of a research project to develop a standard of education and training requiring UK education providers to include service users in the design and delivery of education and training.

Background: Often the objective of a research project is to deliver a decision where there is insufficient objective evidence. In this particular instance a decision was sought on whether service users should be involved in the design and delivery of education and training for healthcare professionals and what this involvement might look like.

Planning a pathway in nursing: do course experiences influence job plans?

Little is known about the factors that influence career decisions within nursing. This study contributes to a limited body of knowledge about the affect of course experiences on job plans. The findings presented are from the first phase of a longitudinal questionnaire survey investigating nurses' careers.

Using questionnaires to ask nurses about working in the community: problems of definition.

Given the emphasis on providing services in the community, it is likely that there will be an increase in research into various aspects of the community. It is important that the way in which 'community' is defined in research will provide valid and reliable data and facilitate comparisons with other work on the subject. This paper discusses how the problems of defining the community were approached in a longitudinal study of the careers of people qualifying from the pre-registration diploma course in nursing.

A multi-stage approach to the coding of data from open-ended questions.

One of the criticisms of qualitative research is that the processes and procedures of data analysis tire often not made explicit ( 1 ). This criticism is particularly pertinent to the analysis of open-ended questions. This paper outlines an approach to analysing open-ended questions using content analysis, making explicit the processes and procedures involved.