As a knowledge brokering organisation, our activities involve working closely with decision-makers to determine their evidence needs and what we can deliver for and with them to meet those needs. We became interested in whether the popular concept of co-production could explain how we work, especially with decision-makers at the local level, and help inform our Public Services work.
In particular, we are interested in what co-production means (definition/s), how and why it is achieved (process and aims) and whether it works (impact). To answer our questions, we conducted a literature review of 99 academic sources which highlighted that:
- There is no agreed definition of what co-production is, with multiple meanings co-existing making it difficult to find out what constitutes co-production of research.
- A multiplicity of processes and aims of co-production also co-exist, with models and frameworks being developed for one study, never to be used again (some exceptions exist such as Integrated Knowledge Transfer)
- A dearth of evaluations of co-production exercises, making it difficult to tell whether co-production of research works, especially when co-production exercises are resource intensive for research producers, brokers and users.
We are planning a workshop with Welsh stakeholders involved in co-production of research (e.g., research producers and users) to discuss these findings and find out what good co-production of research means to them and how we at WCPP can learn from their examples.