Stakeholders, end users, partners?

There are lots of terms to describe the people that we work with. Here is a list of different terms (adapted from Phillipson et al. (2012)) that might be useful to help us clearly distinguish:

Project partner:

Actively involved as part of the project team in design and development of project.

Collaborator

Actively involved in design and development of project but not in the project team.

Consultee:

Stakeholder who provides active feedback at different stages of research process.

Steering/ advisory /reference group member

Interested parties who offer guidance or advice to project when convened.

Research subject

Stakeholders who participate as a survey respondent, interviewee etc.

Event participant

Person who participates in an event

Next user or end user

Receiver of information or end-user of results.

A stakeholder is someone who has a stake in the issues that your research is working on. They may be interested in it, affected by the issue or affected by the solution. You can invite stakeholders to interact with your project in the ways listed above.

More information

Phillipson, J., Lowe, P., Proctor, A., Ruto, E. (2012). Stakeholder engagement and knowledge exchange in environmental research. Journal of Environmental Management. 95: 56-65.