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Workshop 9: Participatory research

Understanding “what is participatory research” requires considering what we mean by the term “participatory” and how it is different to other forms of research. This weeks topic introduced me to this inclusive research design methodology which  involves engaging members of the community which provides the setting for  the research.

(Cornwall and Jewkes, 2005) argue that what distinguishes participatory research from conventional research is not primarily about methods or theory but concerns the “location of power in the research process”.  This means that the research is focused on gaining knowledge through action and using a “bottom-up” approach – a focus on locally defined priorities and perspectives. It involves the co-construction of research through partnerships between researchers and people affected by and/or responsible for action on the issues under study

Their table below compares participatory research (PR) to conventional research to show that through the different stages of research (identifying a research problem, data collection analysis, presentation and action) there are different emphases on who participates and who is given power to shape the research process.

prresearch

The strength of participatory research is in its approach – to respect and understand the people for whom researchers work and come up with community driven innovative solutions to transform the society.

We also had the opportunity to hear first-hand from two Monash researchers, Dr. Belinda and Mr. Greg who shared their experiences and opinion on how participatory research can be implemented in the IS field.

Some the challenges of  however that also became evident was that:

  • Local people may be highly skeptical of the research making participatory research very challenging.
  • The research is also vulnerable to being manipulated by the agendas of the powerful or working outside these structures and potentially weakening the impact of the project and potentially further marginalizing the participants.
  • Not every member of the community has the same level of knowledge/interpretation  of the research problem and
  • IS research should be a few steps ahead on where the community knowledge currently is. The community currently does not exist to test nor give suggestion on the requirements and thus participatory research may not always be transformative/suitable.

As we are concluding the FIT6021 course in the coming week, it is also interesting to highlight that we are able to link other research methods with the participatory research approach. These easily identifiable approaches are:

  • Participatory action research
  • Second generation grounded theory
  • Participatory design science
    • User-centred design/value-sensitive design

References:

Cornwall, A., & Jewkes, R. 1995. What is participatory research? Social Science & Medicine, 41(12): 1667-1676