The meaningful participation of consumers on mental health agency boards: experiential power and models of governance
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This research investigated the meaningful participation of consumers of mental health services on the governing boards of mental health agencies. Study 1 utilized a qualitative interview methodology to develop a conceptual model specifying the relationships between power resources and four components of meaningful participation. Interviews were conducted with 13 consumer board members, 5 professional board members, and 4 executive directors (EDs) of 5 mental health agencies in Ontario. Interview transcripts were coded and analyzed using the data analytic techniques recommended by Miles & Huberman (1994). In support of the conceptual model, participants endorsed representative participation, participatory competence, personal validation, and perceived influence as important components of meaningful participation. Representative participation was enhanced when consumer members had linkages to an external community of consumers; participatory competence and influence were viewed as greater when consumers were able to draw upon their own personal experiences during board discussions. Professional intimidation, dismissiveness, and professional discourse were viewed by consumer members as diminishing personal validation, participatory competence, and influence. Supportive acts and atmosphere, and positive feedback from other board members served to enhance feelings of personal validation, participatory competence, and perceived influence. A revised conceptual model of meaningful participation was formulated. Interviews also suggested the centrality of the "experiential power" of consumers to meaningful participation and the potential importance of models of board governance. Based on emergent findings of Study 1 and elements of role theory, Study 2 investigated the relationship between models of board governance and meaningful participation. Interviews were conducted with Study 1 participants (11 consumers, 5 professionals, and 2 EDs) and a new sample of two additional boards (3 consumers, 4 professionals, and 2 EDs). Findings supported the expectations that boards adopting a policy-focussed model of governance, versus a management-focussed model, would allow consumers a greater opportunity to draw upon experiential and representational knowledge, thus enhancing their experiential power. Experiential power was associated with greater representative participation, participatory competence and perceived influence. Practical implications for consumer board recruitment, training, and participation on contemporary mental health agencies are discussed.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.011 | 0.016 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.017 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".