5. Building Trust

Building and maintaining trust with PPI contributors is a process. While there are many ways to consider trust, Stephen Covey splits trust into:

Issues that may affect trust

• PPI contributors may have previous negative PPI experiences which you will need to counter. This may have been with an undergrad from another university or it may have been from the PI of a major research programme.;
• There may be a clear imbalance between the PPI contributor and the researcher in terms of, for example, status, power, social or economic advantage. This can be difficult to counter – particularly if the PPI contributor is in a more dominant position.
• There may also be a lack of clear purpose on either side. Either the PPI contributor is not clear about what their purpose is to the process or the research team remains unclear about what they are doing with the PPI contributors.
• There may be unrealistic expectations. This again may be on either side, with a PPI contributor expecting that the research will have an instant impact on them personally or the research team having an expectation that a PPI contributor will already have clear ideas about how they can assist in the research cycle or the capacity to carry out certain tasks. Any partner may also have a hidden agenda for being involved.
• There may be different ways of working that will emerge during the PPI activity which can cause friction.

There may be a lack of communication on either side that causes frustration too. Or the focus of discussion may not feature key interests by either side. The contract of engagement is either not clear or has not been constructed and agreed by both sides or is not being adhered to by either side.