Research Methods Festival Programme

Programme for: Friday 2nd July am

Venue: See conference programme

Bookings for the conference have closed.

Taking user involvement seriously

9:30 - 12:45

It might work in Minnesota but it won’t work in Morecambe: making research synthesis work for diverse users

A workshop dedicated to the work of Professor Sally Baldwin

Chair: Anne Harrop, Director of Research, Joseph Rowntree Foundation

Workshop organisers:

Lisa Arai, Helen Roberts, City University

Nicky Britten, Peninsula Medical School

Mark Petticrew, University of Glasgow

Jennie Popay, Katrina Roen, Lancaster University

Mark Rodgers, Amanda Sowden, University of York

(RMP Project)

Workshop Aims:

This workshop is dedicated to Sally Baldwin, who died in October 2004 in a tragic accident in Rome. Sally spent much of her academic career pursuing her belief in the need for good quality research evidence to inform the development and implementation of policy and practice to address social inequalities. Initially, this concern was directed at the conduct of primary empirical social research but in later years she also turned her attention to methods for research synthesis. Sally was a member of the research team on our ESRC funded project aiming to develop narrative approaches to the synthesis of evidence and she never failed to remind us of the need for our work to find ways in which systematic reviews can be made more useful and accessible to a wide range of potential users. In this context the workshop has two main aims:

· to explore some of the challenges facing those wishing to contribute to the increased utility of evidence synthesis for policy makers and practitioners

· to consider some of the methods that are being developed to create a new generation of systematic reviews that combine a legitimate concern with the reduction of bias with equal attention to the maximisation of utility

The workshop will have a particular focus on interventions to reduce health inequalities and improve population health but the issues to be addresses have relevance beyond the field of public health.

Workshop programme