From Participation to Partnership: Reflexive Reflections on Co-Research with Older Adults
How can we make research more relevant, impactful, and connected to the realities of people鈥檚 lives? One way is through co-research, an approach that treats lived experience as expertise and positions community members as partners in the process. By centring lived experience, co-research enhances both the quality and the relevance of findings.
This approach has been gaining traction across health and social sciences, and more recently within aging research. Yet while the benefits are widely recognized, putting co-research principles into practice requires time, resources, and thoughtful training to ensure community members feel supported in their roles.
In this blog, I share reflections from my perspective as a doctoral student and Research Assistant working on the Collective of Older Adult Researchers (COAR) project, an innovative intergenerational co-research initiative with older adults鈥攈ighlighting what worked well and how these experiences might help strengthen a culture of community-engaged research with local seniors-serving organizations.
Learning Together: Older Adults and Graduate Students as Co-Researchers
The COAR project grew from a partnership between Vancouver-based and 天美mv天美鈥檚 Science and Technology for Aging Research (STAR) Institute. It set out to explore what co-research training might look like in practice while supporting 411鈥檚 vision of becoming a 鈥渃ommunity research hub.鈥�
Older adults from 411 Seniors were paired with 天美mv天美 graduate students to learn foundational research skills and gain hands-on research experience. For older adults, this meant opportunities to develop research capacity, shape projects grounded in lived experience, and share knowledge in a supportive, collaborative environment. For graduate students, it provided a chance to put academic training into practice and learn directly from community expertise.
What made this model powerful was not just the exchange of skills, but the relationships it fostered. Older adults brought insights grounded in lived experience and community priorities, while students contributed methodological and academic knowledge.
Together, they redefined what participation in research could look like鈥攃hallenging traditional ideas of 鈥渆xpertise鈥� and demonstrating the transformative potential of cross-generational dialogue.
Building Capacity, Raising Questions
A central aim of COAR was to build capacity among older adults to engage in research in a more authentic and meaningful way. Through a series of workshops, members of 411 Seniors Centre gained a foundation in research principles, methods, and practices.
For many, this training was empowering and affirming鈥攊t positioned them as knowledge-holders whose experiences could shape not only the content but also the direction of research.
Being involved in delivering these sessions also prompted reflection. While we could offer initial skills and confidence, sustaining a co-research hub requires more than short-term training. It calls for ongoing opportunities for engagement, institutional backing, and long-term resources.
I found myself asking: how can researchers better support organizations to maintain momentum once a project ends? What responsibility do academic collaborators carry in ensuring continuity, rather than stepping away when funding cycles conclude? These questions are common in co-research, but they are essential if such initiatives are to move beyond pilots and develop lasting impact.
Looking Ahead
The COAR initiative showed that older adults can be engaged not just as participants, but as partners and leaders in research. It demonstrated the value of intergenerational collaboration, where students and older adults learned with and from each other, and highlighted how research capacity can be built within community organizations. At the same time, it underscored the challenges of sustaining these efforts.
Reflecting on this process, I am left with both optimism and pragmatic awareness. Optimism, because I witnessed the enthusiasm, skill, and insight that older adults brought to the work, along with the genuine learning that occurred across generations. Pragmatic awareness, because I also recognize how much these efforts depend on sustained support to flourish.
The key question moving forward is not only how do we start co-research projects? But how do we sustain them? What structures are needed to ensure that community hubs like COAR can endure? How might models like this be adapted across contexts while remaining sensitive to local priorities? And how do we, as researchers, remain accountable to the communities we partner with once projects formally conclude?
To help carry this work forward, we have developed a toolkit capturing workshop methods, activities, and lessons from the COAR initiative. Its value lies in providing a foundation鈥攕omething others can build on as co-research with older adults continues to evolve. We invite you to explore the toolkit here and consider how it might inspire and support co-research in your own communities.
