Towards a tinkering participatory research method in mental health

The current agreement that evidence-based practice is a merger of research evidence, clinical expertise and patient preferences has made service user involvement and participant research not only acceptable, but also called for and desired. However, what user involvement and participant research entails, and how best to implement it, is contestable and ideologically rooted. In this paper, we describe three different ideologies, a liberal, an emancipatory and a caring ideology, and we present their concomitant methodological solutions and preferences. Finally, we outline a tinkering participatory research method by borrowing from the above-mentioned ideological views. We would claim that this method balances well between the demands of scientific rigour and the expectations of ideological and social relevance.