What is the Co-Creation of New Knowledge? A Content Analysis and Proposed Definition for Health Interventions

Tania Pearce, Myfanwy Maple, Anthony Shakeshaft, Sarah Wayland and Kathy McKay
Additional contact information
Tania Pearce: School of Health, University of New England, Armidale, NSW 2351, Australia
Myfanwy Maple: School of Health, University of New England, Armidale, NSW 2351, Australia
Anthony Shakeshaft: National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Randwick Campus, 22–32 King Street, Randwick, NSW 2031, Australia
Sarah Wayland: C43A, Jeffrey Miller Admin Building, Cumberland Campus, The University of Sydney, Lidcombe, NSW 2141, Australia
Kathy McKay: Department of Health Services Research, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 3BX, UK

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 7, 1-18

Abstract: Co-creation of new knowledge has the potential to speed up the discovery and application of new knowledge into practice. However, the progress of co-creation is hindered by a lack of definitional clarity and inconsistent use of terminology. The aim of this paper is to propose a new standardised definition of co-creation of new knowledge for health interventions based on the existing co-creation literature. The authors completed a systematic search of electronic databases and Google Scholar using 10 of the most frequently used co-creation-related keywords to identify relevant studies. Qualitative content analysis was performed, and two reviewers independently tested the categorisation of papers. Of the 6571 papers retrieved, 42 papers met the inclusion criteria. Examination of the current literature on co-creation demonstrated how the variability of co-creation-related terms can be reduced to four collaborative processes: co-ideation, co-design, co-implementation and co-evaluation. Based on these four processes, a new definition of co-creation of new knowledge for health interventions is proposed. The analysis revealed the need to address the conceptual ambiguity of the definition of “co-creation of new knowledge”. The proposed new definition may help to resolve the current definitional issues relating to co-creation, allowing researchers and policymakers to progress the development of co-creation of new knowledge in research and practice.

Keywords: co-creation; co-creation of new knowledge; content analysis; knowledge translation; collaboration; health intervention; knowledge production; co-design; co-evaluation; co-ideation; co-implementation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/7/2229/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/7/2229/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:17:y:2020:i:7:p:2229-:d:337366

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().