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This article reports on a study of how people do research that matters to people with learning disabilities and that involves them and their views and experiences. The study was an attempt to bring together people doing inclusive research so that, collectively, we could take stock of our practices. This would add to the individual reports and reflections on approaches that are already available. In particular, we wanted to explore what quality means in inclusive research and how we might best achieve this. We used focus groups to share and generate knowledge, and we recorded, transcribed and analysed the dialogue, looking for themes and answers to core questions. We found that there are many different ways of doing research inclusively, and we propose a model to describe this. Reflecting on the findings, we argue that it is important to keep a flexible vision of inclusive research and to keep learning and talking together.

This article presents some of the emergent methods developed to fit a study of quality in inclusive research with people with learning disabilities. It addresses (i) the ways in which the methodology was a response to the need for constructive, transformative dialogue through use of repeated focus groups in a design interspersing dialogic and reflective spaces; and (ii) how stimulus materials for the focus groups involved imaginative and creative interactions with data. Particular innovations in the blending of narrative and thematic analyses and data generation and analysis processes are explored, specifically the creative use of metaphor as stimulus and the playful adaptation of I-poems from the Listening Guide approach as writing and performance. In reflecting on these methodological turns we also reflect on creativity as an interpretive lens. The paper is an invitation for further methodological dialogue and development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]