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The ‘What is the Problem Represented to Be’ (WPR) approach to policy analysis is a widely used framework that problematizes how policy problems came to be and scrutinizes the effects of a policy problem. However, research using this approach has not conventionally incorporated diverse knowledge-producers or collaborative analysis techniques. In this paper, we provide a worked example of how collaborative analysis and researcher reflexivity can be incorporated into a WPR analysis. By co-analyzing documents from the UK’s NHS ‘Help us Help You’ cervical screening campaign, we demonstrate how involving co-analysts with lived and learnt experience heightens critical scrutiny during the WPR process, helping reveal new perspectives on problem representations and the lived effects of a policy. In line with Bacchi’s recent thinking, we reiterate the importance of researcher reflexivity. We advance this work by showing how analysis from different vantage points can create a politically and socially relevant WPR analysis which has transformative potential. Our key contribution is the introduction of a new question for inclusion within the WPR framework: How do different stakeholder knowledges align with or challenge your analysis of the problem representation?
Hickman et al. (Tue,) studied this question.