| Study preparation: building collaborative partnerships |
| Ensuring broad community support |
Consultation round with stakeholders resulting in different study support mechanisms (community advisory board, lay research team); Specific selection criteria for recruiting lay researchers |
| Socio-cultural diversity of the lay research team |
Reflected the heterogeneity of the sub-Saharan African community at large; Increased community support of the study |
| Lay researchers’ different educational background |
Research rationale and methods were translated adequately to facilitate informed decision-making among the lay research team |
| Lay researchers culturally grounded knowledge and beliefs |
Knowledge and beliefs at times inconsistent with scientific evidence (e.g., HIV “risk”); Lay researchers gained insights in the complexity of HIV prevention; contribution to theory building |
| Equal contribution of all lay researchers to emerging issues |
Leadership skills; Fostering a coherent team to facilitate equal contribution of all team members |
| Inflexible administrative rules in an academic context |
Transparency about reimbursement (“volunteers”); Reimbursements within the boundaries of the project and the administrative rules (e.g., lay researchers’ legal status) |
| Study implementation: mobilization of community venues and data collection |
| Ensuring scientific rigour and data quality |
Training and monitoring of the lay research team by the study PI (supervision, monitoring, trouble shooting); Improved research and data collection skills (e.g., interviewing) leading to enhanced data quality |
| Mobilization of community venues for study participation |
Personal networks of lay research team useful in preparing study sites and recruitment of study participants |
| Support of community-leaders during data collection (i.e., HIV testing) |
Using personal networks to gain community-leaders’ support to improve study acceptability; Community-leaders acted as role models |
| Study results: disseminating findings and prevention planning |
| Stigmatizing potential of study results |
Instalment of a prevention task force to discuss dissemination of findings; Series of community-based workshops with wide community representation to decide on how to communicate the study findings |
| Translation of study results into concrete prevention activities |
Prevention started during data collection due to visibility of the research teams at study sites; Organization of several feedback moments during the study to jointly interpret findings |
