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The topic of parent migration and its effects on the family environment has become a focus of moral dilemmas in East Europe for the last three decades. Children have been portrayed as social orphans and parents working abroad as neglectful parents. Today, with more evidence from research and experience, the impact of parental migration is much more comprehensive and nuanced, recognising its noxious or even harmful but also possibly empowering effects. This chapter reflects on the involvement of left-behind adolescents as co-researchers in a study of transnational families. It acknowledges the agentic role of children (often automatically labelled as victims of neglect), amplifies their voices to inform existing data on the impact of parents' departure to work abroad and identifies directions for intervention that might strengthen families.

The research is an integral part of CASTLE – Children Left Behind by Labour Migration, an ongoing project (June 2021–December 2023). ¹ This chapter presents the research collaboration experience with 12 co-researcher adolescents with previous left-behind experiences, originating from Moldova and currently residing in Romania. The co-researchers participated in all stages of the research process: training, design of data collection, recruitment of research participants, data analysis and dissemination of results. Taking co-researcher roles had an empowering effect on adolescents, who learnt how to express their views on the topic, voiced their experiences about the emotional costs of being left behind by their parents and reflected on sensitive issues like separation of family members and violence in the family.

The digital age requires people of all ages to communicate and organise their lives through digital technologies. The project EQualCare investigates how the growing population of older people living alone is managing this transition, how it shapes their (non-)digital social networks and what changes on a local level need to be brought about. This paper aims to give insight into the process of participatory action research (PAR) with older people in the community across four countries and reflects on experiences made by academic and co-researchers.

Following the emancipatory underpinnings of PAR, which aims to reduce inequalities through collaboration and co-design, EQualCare involved nine teams of co-researchers across Finland, Germany, Latvia and Sweden making older people the centre of policy development. Co-researchers were involved in formulating research aims, collecting data, reflecting on data, formulating and disseminating recommendations for local policy stakeholders.

Co-researchers’ motivation to invest considerable time and effort was driven by a desire to create a more equal future for older people living alone. Moreover, they were keen to involve marginalised older people and became frustrated when this proved difficult. Power dynamics played a role throughout the process but became productive as roles and responsibilities were renegotiated. Doing PAR with older people can be emotionally challenging for co-researchers when negative feelings around ageing are encountered.

The paper advances understanding on the process of PAR in ageing research by reflecting on the social, cultural and political contexts of doing PAR with diverse sets of older people.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss learning about service-user and carer involvement from an action research (AR) study into self-directed support implementation in one English mental health trust. The paper promotes appointing and supporting carers and people with experience as co-researchers to obtain authentic local perspectives when undertaking service implementation or redesign.

The researchers used an AR spiral method incorporating carers and people with mental health experience as co-researchers. The co-researchers worked alongside the lead researcher gathering data from focus groups, training sessions and other meetings over four years and attending collaborative steering group meetings alongside professional workers throughout the study.

The authors suggest that participation gave co-researchers a powerful and effective voice in this service redesign. This approach revealed more authentic research data and required professionals to be more accountable for their perceptions and to make explicit their understandings throughout the study, which enabled more effective working. Steering group participation was central to securing this participation.

The paper illustrates how carer and service-user co-researchers can be supported to benefit both mental health organisations undergoing change and to co-researchers themselves. It also identifies AR’s utility in uncovering learning as well as structuring change.

This paper aims to discuss the experiences of a group of eight user and carer researchers from learning disability and mental health services who worked together in a research project. The research was to find out about the changes that took place as over 300 people moved from hostel accommodation into independent tenancies. These moves were part of a three year project involving a partnership between a local authority and a housing association.

The evaluation was based on a model of user participation.

User involvement in research can mean different things with different levels of involvement, from consultation through to user‐controlled research. In this paper the authors discuss some of the challenges in doing this kind of evaluation study, as well as the opportunities that came from involving users and carers in the research. This includes how the researchers got involved and some of the activities they did.

The authors also describe some of the difficulties that were faced, including payments and criminal record checks. The ways in which people were trained and supported to take part and stay involved are outlined as well as how the group feel that they have learnt new skills and increased their confidence.

This paper adds the voices of the co‐researchers to the literature and provides “lessons learned” for other researchers in this area.

The purpose is to share strategies, rationales and lessons learnt from user involvement in a quality and safety improvement research project from the practice field in nursing homes and homecare services.

This is a viewpoint paper summarizing how researchers and co-researchers from the practice field of nursing homes and homecare services (nurse counsellors from different municipalities, patient ombudsman and next-of-kin representatives/and elderly care organization representant) experienced user involvement through all phases of the research project. The project included implementation of a leadership intervention.

Multiple strategies of user involvement were applied during the project including partnership in the consortium, employment of user representatives (co-researchers) and user-led research activities. The rationale was to ensure sound context adaptation of the intervention and development of tailor-made activities and tools based on equality and mutual trust in the collaboration. Both university-based researchers and Co-researchers experienced it as useful and necessary to involve or being involved in all phases of the research project, including the designing, planning, intervention implementation, evaluation and dissemination of results.

User involvement in research is a growing field. There is limited focus on this aspect in quality and safety interventions in nursing homes and homecare settings and in projects focussing on the leadership' role in improving quality and safety.

The purpose of this paper is to study how young vocational school students in Finland frame themselves and their participation in society and whether they are seen in various media. The explorative research, with n = 213 vocational school and prepatory VALMA students as co-researchers, tells us that young vocational school students use value framing to create understandings of themselves as participants in society and in media. The purpose is this to present the breadth of their thinking and to draw conclusions from the empirical data produced solely by the co-researchers.

Explorative multidisciplinary research was done as co-research with n = 213 vocational school students in Finland. Research includes theoretical background and focuses on empirical qualitative data to further illustrate the explorative nature and results of the study.

The findings of the explorative co-research tell us that young vocational school students use value framing to create understandings of themselves as participants in society and in media. Co-researchers view themselves as missing in traditional media but find freedom on social media. Content from various media is viewed as reliable and trustworthy but also as problematic propaganda based on personal value framing. The relationship with traditional print media is strained because young people feel that media has othered them and continues to frame them negatively. While they look for that entertaining content across the media spectrum, bullying is an ever-present concern.

This study focused only on vocational school students in Finland. A broader sample of young people, or of minorities, could produce profound results on media literacy, relationships and power relations in the society. Also, framings of the various international media would provide content for analysis. More profound analysis of the data shall be done in the next phase of the research.

Study time was limited. More in-depth study will follow. Implications to future research, media consumption and framing should be done with a larger group of researchers and youth.

Social implications towards framing of youth in various media and the transfer of these framing as knowledge in larger society. This includes notions of power of various actors in media and in society at large.

Multidisciplinary explorative co-research on the topic is largely missing from academia. Additionally, the voices of those in the fringes of society is muted, whilst also those youth studying the vocational schools.

This chapter aims to present and critically question the work undertaken with a group of children as experts in a transdisciplinary research project, ‘Exploring the way to and from school with children: An interdisciplinary approach of children’s experiences of the third place’. The project is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.¹ A partnership was established between the research team and a group of 10 children (11–12 years old). The children were actively involved as co-researchers to provide the research team with expertise regarding their experiences of the school journey. Their roles as co-researchers included refining the research questions and methodological tools, analysing data, and drafting final recommendations. In this chapter, the authors outline the different stages of this transdisciplinary partnership with children as co-researchers, whilst addressing some key issues encountered during the process, including: What is expertise? When, and under what conditions, can children genuinely be co-researchers? What ethical aspects should be considered? The authors commence with an outline of the project’s theoretical framework before detailing how the participatory process enabled children to actively take part and give their views on the research. The authors address a specific focus on the ethical challenges encountered as part of the complexities of conducting research with children. They conclude with some reflections on the benefits of involving children as co-researchers and, in doing so, offer a critique of the notion of ‘expertise’ in research with children.

Researchers who work in partnership with older adults in participatory studies often experience various advantages, but also complex ethical questions or even encounter obstacles during the research process. This paper aims to provide insights into the value of an intersectional lens in participatory research to understand how power plays out within a mixed research team of academic and community co-researchers.

Four academic researchers reflected in a case-study approach in a dialogical way on two critical case examples with the most learning potential by written dialogical and via face-to-face meetings in duos or trios. This study used an intersectionality-informed analysis.

This study shows that the intersectional lens helped the authors to understand the interactions of key players in the study and their different social locations. Intersections of age, gender, ethnicity/class and professional status stood out as categories in conflict. In hindsight, forms of privilege and oppression became more apparent. The authors also understood that they reproduced traditional power dynamics within the group of co-researchers and between academic and community co-researchers that did not match their mission for horizontal relations. This study showed that academics, although they wanted to work toward social inclusion and equality, were bystanders and people who reproduced power relations at several crucial moments. This was disempowering for certain older individuals and social groups and marginalized their voices and interests.

Till now, not many scholars wrote in-depth about race- and age-related tensions in partnerships in participatory action research or related approaches, especially not about tensions in research with older people.

The purpose of this paper is to share research findings on the lived experiences of asylum seekers in Bristol (UK), with a particular focus on psychological needs and sources of resilience.

The study was designed following the principles of action research and was carried out in three phases involving nine co-researchers. Thematic analysis was used to interpret the resulting data, collected through semi-structured interviews.

The findings highlight challenges which are faced by asylum seekers after migrating to the UK and indicate how these do not allow for psychological needs to be met, undermining resilience. Co-researchers indicated that aspects of the asylum system were perceived as unfair, adding to existing losses and promoting fear. Strength was found through engaging with communities and religious practices.

The research suggests that asylum seekers feel misrepresented and misunderstood within the public realm and raises serious questions around the current asylum legislation. It offers practitioners insight into key determinants for psychological well-being from the perspective of asylum seekers, providing suggestions for sensitive and appropriate interventions.

The study offers original insights into asylum seekers’ experiences, with a specific focus on Bristol. The use of action research and the involvement of asylum seekers as co-researchers are also noteworthy, as collaborative research is scarce in this field.