Moving from theory to practice: exploring power and power sharing in participatory health research partnerships: a scoping review protocol

IntroductionParticipatory health research (PHR) as a research paradigm, guides the research process and strives to achieve positive change in society in the interest of peoples health. In this scoping review, PHR will be used as an umbrella term considering a wide range of collaborative research approaches in the health context. PHR is conducted with or by those it intends to benefit, as opposed to on and for them. Their involvement throughout the research process seeks to shift power and decision-making from where they traditionally lay within academia toward community, patient and public end-users. Research cannot be truly participatory without concurrently addressing power dynamics within the partnership and power imbalances in decision making. Therefore, power sharing can be defined as a major factor in building effective academic-community collaborations. This scoping review aims to identify, clarify, and map existing literature on power and power sharing in PHR from both theoretical and practical perspectives. Specifically, we will explore how is power conceptualised throughout the literature, and how power and power sharing are applied and addressed in real-life PHR partnerships. Materials and methodsThis scoping review will be conducted in accordance with the guidelines outlined in the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) Reviewers Manual. This scoping review will consider both empirical and non-empirical research that report on understanding power and power sharing in participatory health research partnerships. All appropriate studies will be retrieved from the following five electronic databases: PubMed, Scopus, Embase, PsycINFO, SocIndex. This review will be limited to articles published in English and from January 1998 to April 2022. As the scoping review aims to capture more than peer-reviewed and published literature, it will also include grey literature such as theses and dissertations, reports, conference proceedings, and editorials. Data from the included literature will be extracted based on the data extraction tool, defined in advance. Ethics and disseminationAs primary data will not be collected, ethical approval is not required to conduct the scoping review. The findings of this study will be disseminated through peer-reviewed publications.