About the Co-Priority Working Group

This survey has been collaboratively designed by a group of community members with a range of lived experiences including those with no previous involvement in research, alongside practitioners and academic researchers at the University of the Highlands & Islands. The community members were selected through an open recruitment process via the Community Knowledge Matters network, with support from an independent community organisation.

You can see a list of some of the individuals who took part in this working group below:

  • Lauren Pyott (Community Knowledge Matters Network Coordinator, Inverness)

  • Louise McQuaid (Independent Community Member, Orkney)

  • Remi Martin (African, Asian & Mixed Heritage Association Co-Founder, Inverness) 

  • Shannon Boston (Peer Researcher with Open Project, Shetland)

  • Caroline King (Public Health Scotland)

  • Rachel Erskine (Researcher and Lecturer at UHI)

  • Sarah-Anne Munoz (Visiting Professor, UHI)

what has the collaborative survey design process involved?

The working group have met regularly over the past few months to discuss and collectively decide: the themes which they felt were necessary to explore, the types of questions which they felt would be relevant, the way in which these questions should be asked to be as accessible and meaningful as possible, the way in which they survey should be distributed and publicised.

After the survey is closed, the responses will also be analysed by the community members alongside the academic researchers, to make sure that the conclusions being made from the results are understood and relatable to rural communities.

The collaborative research team will then write up a paper together and the anonymised findings will be shared on the Community Knowledge Matters website. This will mean that the conclusions from the survey responses can also be shared with policy-makers, funders, researchers and health & social care professionals who may want to engage with rural communities about mental health in the future. As a result, we hope this will ensure that your feedback on how you would prefer to engage with research can be better taken into consideration. 

Get in touch

If you have any further questions about this or would like to find out how you might be able to get involved in future projects such as this, we’d love to hear from you.