How to Start Getting More Familiar with Research About Peer Support and Peer Support Specialists (Part 2 of 2)
My last post offered five reasons for you to read at least some research about peer support and Peer Support Specialists. If I’ve been able to at least pique your curiosity, the natural question is “How do I start?” I would suggest that a great way to begin is by poking around in the published research articles related to Peers.
You may or may not know that the internet, search engines and AI have made this quite easy. For those with no experience, try the following procedure to get your feet wet.
A. Use Google to find a common research search engine. I like GoogleScholar.com, but PubMed is probably the other most popular search engine related to healthcare. These sites are designed to help you quickly find research papers on a topic of your interest. These “papers” are what researchers write in order to summarize the work they are doing or to summarize their views or theories on an important topic. For most of these articles, the author worked for several years to conduct the research, and then write up the summary report. That report had to be reviewed by other experts who decided if it was good enough and important enough to be published. If you are reading a published research report, that article has made it past the review of other researchers who have read it carefully, and feel that it is trustworthy and valuable.
B. Do a search on topic of interest. I would suggest you type in “Peer Support Specialist” and simply do a search on that topic. Today Google Scholar shows me that it can find more than 2 million articles related to that term, some of which are not directly related, and some of which are relatively old. Many of these are directly or indirectly about peer support. If you only want articles about Peer Support Specialists, type “Peer Support Specialist”, including the quotation marks. On the left of your screen, you’ll also see a place to tell Google Scholar to only include articles published since 2025. When I do that, I’m left with 350+ articles. Now the search engine will show you a list of these articles. That list is usually in the order of relevance to the term, with the first articles being more relevant than those later in the list.
C. Look at the titles of the top articles and find a title that sounds relevant to your work or to something you want to read about. Click on the title, and the article, or at least a brief summary of the article will pop up. Every research paper starts with a brief summary of the entire paper. This is called the “Abstract” and it quickly tells you what the paper is about, what the researchers did, what they found, and what they concluded. I am surprised how often I don’t need to read the full paper, as the Abstract gives me what I really need to know. If I have questions or need details, I can then read the rest of the paper. If you want the full paper, look for the links to the right of the title. Be aware that some articles don’t have any links to give you the full paper, and a small group will ask for money to give you the article. Don’t pay for articles unless you definitely know that you want and need it, and can’t get it any other way.
D. Read the Abstract/Summary, and consider a few questions: What were the researchers studying? How does it relate to my work? What did they find that I can use to improve my work? Should I save this article for future use?
E. Be patient with research jargon. Be aware that many research papers include language that is not easy to understand. Researchers use these papers to talk to each other, and so they often use jargon that they understand but that non-researchers don’t understand. Don’t get intimidated by that…. You can almost always understand what you need to know by simply reading around the jargon. They may talk about statistics or other technical things that you don’t know about. Focus on what you can understand and in almost all cases, you’ll get what you need.
F. Do a new search, adding or changing terms to get at a new area of interest. Keep looking at papers, recognizing that many are not going to be helpful, while others will be VERY helpful. You are looking through the many in order to find the valuable few.
G. When you find a paper that is very helpful, save it. Talk about it with your supervisor and/or your co-workers. Talk about the ideas, the results, and/or the conclusions. Consider if the paper could be useful to you in trying to persuade others at your work to change something important.
H. Go back later and search for articles again. The more you look at research, the more it will start to make sense and the more you will see opportunities in which it can help you do your job better.
I have added links below to four research papers published in the past year that focus on peer support and/or Peer Support Specialist. Two talk about new roles for Peer Support Specialist, while two discuss at the experience and role of Peer Support Specialist. Use the links to look at one or more of the papers and think about how you might use that paper or something similar in your work.
Good luck in this endeavor, and happy reading!
Connors, J. N., Magalhaes, E., Prather, K., Khan, N., Draucker, C., Eliacin, J., ... & Musey, P. (2025). Diverse Patient Experiences of Internet-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy with Guided Peer Support for Generalized Anxiety Disorders. Journal of Patient Experience, 12, 23743735241310322.
B. Typology of Mental Health Peer Support Work Components: Systematised Review and Expert Consultation
Hilliard, F., Horan, H., Zgierska, A. E., Edwards, R. C., & Workgroup, H. S. N. (2025). Establishing a model of peer support for pregnant persons with a substance use disorder as an innovative approach for engaging participants in the healthy brain and child development study. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 71, 101495.
Zinzow, H. M., Pericot-Valverde, I., Smalls, L., Brancato, M. G., Chapman, G., Smith, A., ... & Litwin, A. H. (2025). A Peer Support Specialist–Delivered Sexual and Intimate Partner Violence Prevention Program for Women in Substance Use Treatment: Protocol for a Single-Arm Trial. JMIR Research Protocols, 14(1), e68673.
Moran, G. S. (2025). Facing the paradox of professionalizing peer roles in MH services: how addressing self-disclosure with self-determination theory might help. Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences, 34, e1.