Research with and about user participation: potentials and challenges

industry professionals, as well as public agency, policymaker, and interest organization representatives. To capture the diversity of the population, it is important to also pay attention to gender, age, ethnicity, socio-economic factors and physical, and psychological and intellectual functional ability. The purpose of involving users in research has its origin in ideas relating to empowerment; to support individuals to take control over their own situation, involving a striving to shift power in the research process from the researchers to those the research concerns. The research process is then characterised by being carried out with the users as partners, with continuous feedback for mutual reflection and action between the parties as an important principle. The fundamental view of knowledge is, therefore, important to consider, not the least in the medicine and health sciences context where scientific knowledge is generally assigned higher value than tried and tested experience. With user participation in research, this view of knowledge is problematized and questioned. Users are seen as representatives of various groups and as experts on their situations and conditions [2]. It is necessary, therefore, to take into consideration the experience and wishes of patients and relatives as well as the relevance and benefit to the field of various activities. Researchers might be provoked by such recommendations, but need to expand their view of knowledge and take more interest in the contributions that users are able to make to research.