Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Public Health and Surveillance
Date Submitted: Oct 20, 2020
Date Accepted: Dec 21, 2020
Fostering engagement with health and housing innovation: development of participant personas in a social housing cohort
ABSTRACT
Background:
Personas, based on customer or population data, are widely used to inform design decisions in the Commercial Sector. The variety of methods available mean that personas can be produced from various sizes and types of project.
Objective:
The Smartline project combined survey, household sensor and interview data to create personas in order to foster research and innovation by supporting the engagement of businesses and participants with the data.
Methods:
The project participants were social housing residents (adults only) living in central Cornwall, a rural unitary authority in the United Kingdom. A total of 329 households were recruited between September 2017 and November 2018, with 235 (71.4%) providing complete data on demographics, socioeconomic position, household composition, home environment, technology ownership, pet ownership, smoking, social cohesion, volunteering, caring, mental wellbeing, physical and mental health-related quality of life and activity. K-prototype cluster analysis was used to identify eight clusters, which were then linked with the other data to produce the personas, known as the Smartline Archetypes.
Results:
The Smartline Archetypes proved to be an engaging way of presenting data, accessible to a broader group of stakeholders than those who accessed the raw anonymised data, thereby providing a vehicle for greater research engagement and impact.
Conclusions:
Through the adoption of a tool widely used in practice, research projects could generate greater policy and practical impact, while also becoming more transparent and open to the public.
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