PREPARATION

Benefits to the researcher

Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) activity often brings a number of benefits to the researcher or research team:

• Broader perspectives on the relevance of the research and the context within which it takes place
• Insights into the lived experience of a condition or disease
• Legitimacy to the thinking and approach of the research team, reassuring the research team
• Language that interprets how to discuss the research with non-academic audiences
• Skills and connections that may not be typical within a research team
• Pathways to impact for the research findings
• Ambassadors and advocates for the research who are can speak to the media and at public events

Apart from all of these benefits, PPI contributors can act as a supportive network for a research team, which can be a great motivator to a research team. If the PPI relationship is set up appropriately, the PPI contributors will see themselves as supportive members of a wider team rather than disinterested critics. PPI contributors may have critical things to say about a project or activity, but that can be framed in a context of encouraging the progress of an activity.

Note that most PPI contributors, however, are not experts in research methodologies. Even if they do have methodology expertise (and some do), that is not their role. They are there to provide a perspective on research that is not based in the academic literature (that is the role of the research team) but in the lived experience of the condition or disease.

Does PPI lead to better research?

While there are indicators that PPI can be beneficial to research (Brett et al, 2014), there is also a wider discussion about the nature of that question (Madden and Speed, 2017), asking what ‘better research’ actually means for whom and how.

Part of the issue about PPI is that it is not a uniform ‘intervention’; it is affected by the activities chosen, how they are implemented, by whom, with whom (Staley, 2015). An unskilled research team who implement an ineffective PPI activity with unsuitable or unprepared PPI contributors cannot expect that the research process will benefit from that; in fact, it may even harm the team’s reputation and create doubt about other aspects of their research. Put simply, bad PPI rarely benefits research or researchers – good PPI has the potential to benefit research and researchers.

Activity

• Have you been involved in PPI before in your research? If so, what was the activity?
• Does PPI suit your current research?
• What do you see as the advantage of PPI to you?
• Do you have any concerns about PPI?