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Context: Participatory research (PR) is the co‐construction of research through partnerships between researchers and people affected by and/or responsible for action on the issues under study. Evaluating the benefits of PR is challenging for a number of reasons: the research topics, methods, and study designs are heterogeneous; the extent of collaborative involvement may vary over the duration of a project and from one project to the next; and partnership activities may generate a complex array of both short‐ and long‐term outcomes.

Methods: Our review team consisted of a collaboration among researchers and decision makers in public health, research funding, ethics review, and community‐engaged scholarship. We identified, selected, and appraised a large‐variety sample of primary studies describing PR partnerships, and in each stage, two team members independently reviewed and coded the literature …