In community organisations they might include a variety of people who refer people to a program, for instance, or who have other involvement with the program clients. In any event, deeper involvement of participants can further increase the diversity of data, and eventually therefore of understanding. There is a continuum of participation ranging from minimal to substantial. As participation increases so do the opportunities to use participants as a source of challenge to each other and to the researcher. It is when participants are involved as co-researchers that the advantages can become greatest.
Participants are then still informants, but can also become interpreters and research designers.
The discussion between different participants, and between participants and researchers, can offer a dialectic. This can challenge weak or inconsistent data or interpretations. Qualitative Ultimately, many of the advantages of participation depend upon the use of conversational language as the data language and the language of interpretation. Conversational language allows participants access to the data, involvement in its interpretation and application, and the confidence to challenge the interpretations of the researcher. At the heart of the system I use there lies a simple but useful notion.