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In this blog, Professor Brett Smith from Durham University’s Department of Sport and Exercise Sciences introduces a new paper and animation, linked to his ongoing work exploring the promotion of physical activity – which was supported through the NIHR ARC North East and North Cumbria’s Open Funding Competition 2020.

There is growing interest in co-production in the fields of sport, exercise, and health sciences. This includes from researchers in sport and exercise physiology, public health, sports medicine, sport sociology, sport and exercise psychology, sport management, physical education, sport coaching, leisure studies, geography, and occupational therapy.

However, despite this wide interest, there aren’t many academic resources in our field dedicated to the complex problem of comprehensively detailing the co-production of research and taking it forward.

This work (an academic paper and a linked animatation) attempts to address this by offering a resource that can guide researchers in the planning and delivery of co-produced work within sports and health sciences.

What does it cover?

This paper and linked animation:

• Explores and outlines why we might have a need for a resource to support co-production.
• Looks at what we mean by  co-production – exploring different ways co-production is defined and put to use.
• Explores three different ‘types’ of co-production; Citizens’ Contributions to Public Services; Integrated Knowledge Translation; and Equitable and Experientially-informed Research.
• Looks at why researchers co-produce research, along with various challenges involved with doing it.
• Introduces working principles to promote co-production as a means to advance a participatory turn in sport, exercise, and health research.
• Highlights practical options for how to co-produce research and advance various criteria for judging the quality of it.
• Highlights why qualitative researchers are well prepared to do high quality co-produced research, and why they should be considered important collaborators for researchers without qualitative expertise intending to co-produce research.

View the animation

Download the research paper: Co-production: A resource to guide co-producing research in the sport, exercise, and health sciences. Brett Smith, Oli Williams, Lydia Bone and the Moving Social Work Co-production Collective (published in Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, March 2022)

Find out more about work being carried out by Professor Brett Smith and his team, into how healthcare professionals can support disabled people to take part in more physical activity.

For more information email [email protected]