03 · What You Need to Know
Establishing Legitimate Decision-Making Authority in Research Partnerships
What Does Shared Decision-Making Mean in Research?
Shared decision-making in research refers to arrangements through which two or more parties participate in determining specified research actions or priorities.
It may involve joint deliberation, negotiated agreement, delegated authority, consensus procedures, or other governance mechanisms.
The relevant feature is not simply that partners are invited to express opinions. It is that their participation has an agreed relationship to how decisions are made.
For example, a research team may agree that community partners jointly approve recruitment communication strategies, while the principal investigator remains responsible for ensuring that the procedures satisfy ethics approval and sampling requirements.
Shared decision-making should be distinguished from consultation, in which researchers receive advice but retain the final decision unless a different arrangement is established.
What Makes Shared Research Authority Legitimate?
Legitimate authority depends on several considerations, including the nature of the decision, the research governance arrangement, relevant expertise, affected interests, and applicable institutional requirements.
Partners should understand what they are authorized to decide and what responsibilities accompany that authority.
For example, participants with lived experience may have particularly relevant knowledge about acceptable recruitment procedures or meaningful outcomes.
Methodologists may have specialized responsibility for evaluating statistical assumptions or causal identification.
Ethics committees and institutional authorities may hold formal approval responsibilities that cannot be replaced by an informal partnership vote.
Legitimacy therefore requires an appropriate relationship between influence, competence, responsibility, and authorization rather than a universal rule of equal voting rights.
Which Research Decisions Can Partners Commonly Share?
Many research decisions can be shared when the partnership has established suitable authority and procedures.
| Research decision |
Potential partner role |
Important accountability consideration |
| Research priorities |
Jointly identify problems and questions worth investigating. |
Questions must remain researchable and ethically appropriate. |
| Study design |
Evaluate alternatives and contextual implications. |
Design must support the intended inference. |
| Outcome selection |
Identify and prioritize meaningful consequences. |
Measurement validity and analysis requirements remain necessary. |
| Recruitment |
Co-design accessible and acceptable approaches. |
Sampling, privacy, and voluntariness must be protected. |
| Intervention adaptation |
Identify locally appropriate implementation arrangements. |
Essential intervention components and comparability must be evaluated. |
| Data collection |
Contribute to instruments, procedures, or authorized collection activities. |
Training, confidentiality, and data quality requirements apply. |
| Interpretation |
Provide contextual explanations and examine implications. |
Conclusions must remain supported by evidence. |
| Dissemination |
Help determine formats, audiences, and communication priorities. |
Accuracy, publication obligations, and confidentiality must be preserved. |
These are possible domains of partnership, not an exhaustive list or a requirement that every project share all decisions.
Can Research Partners Help Decide the Research Question?
Yes. Research priorities and questions are often particularly appropriate for shared decision-making because stakeholders may identify problems that conventional academic agendas overlook.
For example, students may prioritize the accessibility consequences of educational technology rather than only its effect on examination scores.
Community partners may identify environmental or service-delivery concerns that are not reflected in institutional research priorities.
However, the resulting question must still be sufficiently defined to support an appropriate research design.
Partners can jointly establish priorities while researchers and relevant specialists evaluate methodological feasibility.
Where competing priorities cannot be addressed within one study, the partnership may need to select a narrower question or develop a longer-term research agenda.
Can Partners Share Decisions About Research Design?
Yes, provided the partnership recognizes the scientific implications of the available options.
Partners may contribute to decisions about whether a study should use interviews, surveys, observations, intervention evaluation, or a mixed-methods approach.
Their perspectives may be particularly relevant to acceptability, contextual fit, and the feasibility of proposed procedures.
However, research designs are not interchangeable merely because stakeholders prefer one approach.
For example, a descriptive survey cannot establish the same causal claims as a suitably designed randomized trial.
Researchers should explain the inferential consequences of design choices and evaluate alternatives collaboratively.
Shared design decisions should therefore be informed rather than reduced to preferences expressed without methodological context.
Can Research Partners Select Primary Outcomes?
They can contribute to, and under suitable governance arrangements share, outcome selection decisions.
Partners may identify consequences that matter to affected populations but are absent from conventional outcome frameworks.
However, selecting a primary outcome has consequences for measurement, sample-size planning, statistical analysis, and interpretation.
A proposed outcome should therefore be evaluated for relevance, validity, feasibility, and alignment with the research question.
Partnership authority over outcome selection does not justify changing outcomes selectively after the results are known.
Shared decisions should be made prospectively wherever possible and documented transparently.
Can Partners Decide How Participants Are Recruited?
Yes. Recruitment is a common domain for shared decision-making because partners may understand communication channels, trust relationships, accessibility barriers, and local expectations.
For example, community partners may recommend recruitment through particular organizations or accessible communication formats.
However, recruitment procedures must remain consistent with the sampling strategy, eligibility criteria, privacy requirements, and voluntary informed consent.
Partners should not receive unrestricted access to personal recruitment lists merely because they participate in governance.
Researchers should establish who may contact potential participants, what information may be used, and which procedures require institutional or ethics approval.
Can Partners Share Decisions About Data Collection?
Yes. Partners may help develop instruments, review interview questions, identify appropriate data collection settings, and evaluate participant burden.
They may also collect data when appropriately trained and authorized.
However, data collection responsibilities may require competency assessment, confidentiality agreements, standardized procedures, or other safeguards.
For example, a community researcher conducting interviews should understand the study's consent procedures, data handling requirements, and response to participant distress.
Shared involvement does not remove the need for consistent documentation and data quality assurance.
Can Partners Decide Which Data Are Collected?
Partners can help identify relevant variables, experiences, and contextual information that researchers might otherwise overlook.
For example, a study examining access to digital learning may initially focus on device ownership. Student partners may explain that shared-device use, connectivity costs, and assistive technology compatibility are also relevant.
These contributions can strengthen construct coverage and contextual understanding.
However, data collection should remain proportionate to the research question and participant burden.
Partners should not demand identifiable or sensitive information without a legitimate research purpose and appropriate safeguards.
Can Research Partners Choose the Statistical Analysis?
Partners may contribute to decisions about the quantities that matter, the comparisons of interest, and the interpretation of analytical results.
They may also participate in selecting analytical approaches when they possess or develop the relevant methodological expertise.
However, technical statistical decisions must remain defensible under the research design and data structure.
For example, partners may reasonably request separate estimates for important population groups. A statistician or methodologist should evaluate whether the available sample supports those comparisons and how uncertainty should be handled.
Shared authority does not mean that statistical assumptions can be decided by majority preference.
The appropriate approach is to make the scientific implications understandable and include partners in decisions that can legitimately be negotiated.
Can Partners Influence the Interpretation of Findings?
Yes. Partners may provide contextual knowledge that improves interpretation, particularly when findings concern experiences or institutional processes unfamiliar to external researchers.
For example, teachers may explain implementation constraints that help interpret differences in educational intervention outcomes.
Community partners may identify plausible explanations for recruitment patterns or participant responses.
However, contextual interpretations should be distinguished from explanations established by the research design.
Partners should not be given authority to suppress findings, alter results, or require unsupported conclusions.
Disagreement about interpretation can be documented and discussed without compromising the integrity of the evidence.
Can Partners Decide Whether Findings Are Published?
Research partners may legitimately contribute to dissemination planning, including decisions about audiences, formats, communication timing, and appropriate contextual explanation.
However, publication decisions may be constrained by research integrity obligations, funding agreements, institutional policies, confidentiality requirements, and applicable legal responsibilities.
A partnership should not promise unrestricted authority to suppress unfavorable or inconvenient findings.
Where publication review is agreed, its scope should be explicit. For example, partners may review reports for confidentiality risks or factual contextual errors without gaining authority to change the empirical results.
Researchers should discuss publication expectations before data collection rather than wait until findings become contentious.
Can Partners Control Access to Research Data?
Data governance may be shared or negotiated, particularly in research involving communities with legitimate interests in how information about them is collected and used.
However, access to identifiable data must comply with applicable law, consent arrangements, ethics approvals, institutional requirements, and data stewardship responsibilities.
Partnership status does not automatically authorize access to every dataset.
Researchers should specify who may access which information, for what purpose, and under what safeguards.
Where community governance or Indigenous data sovereignty principles are relevant, these responsibilities may require specific agreements and procedures appropriate to the population and jurisdiction.
Such arrangements should be established prospectively and should not be treated as universally identical across communities.
Which Decisions Require Specialized or Formal Authority?
Some decisions involve responsibilities that cannot be assigned solely through informal agreement.
Examples may include ethics approval, regulatory compliance, institutional authorization, legal data processing responsibilities, and certain clinical or safety decisions.
Statistical or methodological decisions may also require specialized expertise to ensure that the intended inference is valid.
This does not mean that partners must be excluded from discussing such matters. They may identify concerns, review explanations, or contribute relevant expertise.
However, formal approval and accountability must remain with the individuals or bodies authorized under the applicable governance framework.
Should All Partners Have Equal Voting Rights?
Not necessarily. Equal voting rights may be appropriate for some committees or decisions, but they are not universally required for meaningful partnership.
Different decisions may call for consensus, delegated authority, specialist approval, or another arrangement.
For example, partners may jointly determine community engagement priorities while designated investigators retain responsibility for protocol compliance.
The key requirement is that decision rights are established transparently and correspond to the partnership's stated purpose.
Researchers should avoid claiming equal partnership when the governance arrangement provides no meaningful authority over consequential decisions.
How Can a Decision-Rights Matrix Help?
A decision-rights matrix identifies who proposes, advises on, approves, implements, or is accountable for different decisions.
It can help prevent ambiguity, especially when a project involves several institutions or stakeholder groups.
The matrix should distinguish decision-making authority from consultation and operational responsibility.
For example, partners may jointly select community-facing dissemination formats while the research institution retains responsibility for ensuring that released information complies with confidentiality requirements.
Such a matrix should be treated as a governance tool rather than a substitute for applicable legal or institutional authorization.
What If Research Partners Disagree?
Disagreement may arise because partners have different priorities, experiences, or interpretations of the research purpose.
A governance agreement should establish how concerns are raised, what information is shared, and which procedures apply when consensus cannot be reached.
Possible mechanisms include structured deliberation, mediation, independent methodological review, or escalation to an agreed governance body.
However, these mechanisms should not be used to override formal ethical or legal obligations.
Researchers should distinguish disagreements about negotiable priorities from disputes concerning scientific integrity or participant protection.
How Should Scientific Accountability Be Maintained?
Scientific accountability requires that research decisions remain traceable, justified, and consistent with the standards appropriate to the study.
Researchers should document who made consequential decisions, what evidence informed them, and whether they required protocol amendments or approvals.
Prespecified analyses, transparent reporting, and appropriate conflict-of-interest procedures help protect the integrity of findings.
Partnership agreements should clarify which individuals or institutions retain formal responsibility for the study.
Shared decision-making should not create a situation in which everyone participates but no one is accountable.
How Does Shared Decision-Making Relate to Research Partnership?
Shared decision-making is one possible defining feature of research partnership, but its scope varies.
Some projects involve partners in a limited number of consequential decisions. Others use co-production or community-based participatory approaches with broader shared governance.
The appropriate arrangement should reflect the research question, stakeholder interests, resources, and institutional context.
The distinction between research partners and stakeholder advisors is therefore important when establishing decision rights.
Researchers should also consider how shared authority will be maintained alongside clear scientific accountability.
How Should Shared Decisions Be Reported?
Reports should identify the research stages and decisions in which partners participated, the authority they exercised, and the consequences of their involvement.
Researchers should distinguish recommendations, jointly approved decisions, and decisions made by designated investigators or institutions.
Where disagreements occurred, reporting may explain the process used to address them without disclosing confidential discussions unnecessarily.
The GRIPP2 reporting checklists provide guidance for describing patient and public involvement, including its influence and limitations.
Transparent reporting allows readers to evaluate whether shared decision-making was substantive rather than merely nominal.
Watch Out
Do not confuse shared decision-making with unrestricted authority. Partners can have genuine influence over research priorities, design, interpretation, and dissemination while specialized ethical, legal, methodological, and institutional responsibilities remain clearly assigned.
