At a glance

1:1 conversation

The Bournemouth University Public Involvement in Education and Research (BU PIER) Community Researcher Model has been developed by the Bournemouth University PIER Partnership. The approach ensures that lived experience expertise is at the heart of all stages of a project. It enables equitable, diverse, and inclusive involvement.

The model facilitates connecting and building relationships with community organisations, supporting the involvement of people who might otherwise have been unwilling to engage in organisation led research. It is an effective approach to capturing deep and rich lived experience from people who are currently under-served by health and social care research and is a way of working where everyone involved can learn and grow together.

The model is based on the principle that people most affected by health and social care research are often the least involved in shaping and informing it. The BU PIER Community Researcher Model ‘flips’ this, addressing health and social inequalities by building capacity and expertise within communities, supporting the community to address and identify their own solutions to local needs.

For each project the approach is co-designed with the community organisation, and community researchers, and often evolves over time.

About this approach

Useful for talking with

People with lived experience and people who are currently under-served by health and social care research, including particularly marginalised communities. This approach ensures those connecting and having conversations, and capturing what people want to say are from the same community with shared lived experiences.

Purpose of this type of conversation

Provide support to community organisations, who in turn support members of their community with lived experience to be community researchers. The model is a stepped approach that facilitates community researchers to have meaningful conversations within their communities and to lead on research.

Type of conversation

Community led exploration of topics identified by and that matter most to the community.

Training requirements

The BU PIER Community Researcher Model is supported by BU PIER Partnership in line with the needs of the partner community organisation(s).

Budget requirements

Costs depend on length and size of project, level of support required. All public contributors are ‘paid’ in recognition of their time and expertise contributed.

Time commitments

Depends on length and size of project. All community researcher activities are supported before, during, and after the activity and support is tailored to meet the individual needs of the community researcher.

Community Researcher Model

Where we’ve used this locally

Access to cancer services

This project explored disabled, chronically ill, visually impaired and neurodivergent people’s experiences of cancer services, and developed recommendations aimed towards improving the accessibility of these services. We also explored how using the BU PIER Community Researcher Model provides a level of shared understanding between the research team and community members to enable us to capture the perspectives of individuals currently underserved by health and social care research. This project was commissioned by Macmillan Cancer Support and Wessex Cancer Alliance, and overseen by Involving People – Help & Care, Bournemouth University’s PIER Partnership and the Research Centre for Seldom Heard Voices. Two disabled and neurodivergent community researchers were supported to lead the project, and a clinical nurse specialist who works across hospital and community settings to support patients during their cancer journey was recruited.

Research engagement with people who have experienced homelessness - Bournemouth University

Research engagement with people who have experienced homelessness

People who are homeless and vulnerably housed are among the most excluded and marginalised in Dorset. Co-creating inclusive ways of involving them in research could have long-lasting impact on the community, on the relevance and impact of our research, and could contribute to the development of involving other communities who are under-served by research.

This project is a community-led project conducted in collaboration with community researchers with lived experience of homelessness and being vulnerably housed.

Download and read “Research engagement with people who have experienced homelessness” (PDF).

Community Researcher Model

Use this approach