Working Paper #316: Walking a mile in each others' shoes: The evolution of a research design with workplace health and safety partners as part of the process

In applied health and social sciences research, scientists are increasingly being urged to involve potential users of the research findings in research development. Few examples of such collaborative processes exist in workplace health intervention research.

In this paper, the authors describe the development phase of a research program that included at least six partner organizations, twelve members of the research team from six universities, and over 20 members of the broader provincial workplace health and safety system. They participated in the design of a multi-year research program to evaluate workplace-based interventions to reduce the burden of work-related musculoskeletal disorders.

The authors documented the interactions between the researchers and stakeholders, from the conceptualization of the research program to the collaborative initiation of three different streams of workplace health intervention evaluations. They describe the development of partner-researcher collaboration, track the conceptual and instrumental transformations in research design, and report on indicators of the partners’ research knowledge utilization.