Community based participatory research for public relations: Realizing potential for researcher-participant relationships

Relationship management theory and organizational-public relationships (OPR) continue to guide much of the research in public relations (PR) and espouse values of building collaborative and dialogic interactions for mutual benefit. Yet, OPR historically prioritized the use of relationships to reach organizational goals instead of public or community needs. Furthermore, the relationship paradigm has overlooked the significance of relationships between researchers and participants. This essay urges PR to prioritize researcher-participant relationships when engaging in research that concerns a community by using community-based participatory research (CBPR), an approach that values the contributions of community partners. We consider the foundations and critiques of relationships in PR and explain how CBPR can transcend some of these limitations by facilitating mutual benefit in methodological decisions. We then outline the benefits and challenges of using CBPR based on a review of studies across disciplines and the authors’ reflections on employing CBPR in their research. This work builds on the PR scholarship of relationships to offer concrete ways that researchers can utilize CBPR to address community needs and prioritize participants in the research process.     

Managing expectations in participatory research involving older people: what’s in it for whom?

Participatory research actively engages participants in some or all stages of the research process – from deciding on scope and problem statement to actively collecting data to disseminating results and effecting change. Considering the shifting roles of participants and researchers in participatory ageing research, to the academic, participatory research becomes a venture into project and people management, local politics, consultancy and community building. First, we present a literature overview of the promises and pitfalls of participatory research. Then, drawing on a university initiated participatory study involving older people as co-researchers in a neighbourhood in Groningen, the Netherlands, we discuss the shifting roles and expectations of all of those involved in the participatory research process. We conclude that a central question that requires continuous negotiation in the participatory research process is: what’s in in for whom?     

Reflexive Research Ethics for Environmental Health and Justice: Academics and Movement-Building

Community-engaged research on environmental problems has reshaped researcher-participant relationships, academic-community interaction, and the role of community partners in human subjects protection and ethical oversight. We draw on our own and others' research collaborations with environmental health and justice social movement organizations to discuss the ethical concerns that emerge in community-engaged research. In this paper we introduce the concept of reflexive research ethics: ethical guidelines and decision-making principles that depend on continual reflexivity concerning the relationships between researchers and participants. Seeing ethics in this way can help scientists conduct research that simultaneously achieves a high level of professional conduct and protects the rights, well-being, and autonomy of both researchers and the multiple publics affected by research. We highlight our research with community-based organizations in Massachusetts, California, and Alaska, and discuss the potential impacts of the community or social movement on the research process and the potential impacts of research on community or social movement goals. We conclude by discussing ways in which the ethical concerns that surface in community-engaged research have led to advances in ethical research practices. This type of work raises ethical questions whose answers are broadly relevant for social movement, environmental, and public health scholars.     

Planning an organizational wellness initiative at a multi-state social service agency

Increasingly, organizations in general, and social service organizations, specifically, are recognizing the importance of planning and evaluating organizational wellness initiatives. Yet, few participatory models for carrying out these aims exist. For this study, researchers utilized concept mapping (CM) to explicate a conceptual framework for planning, and subsequently evaluating, a wellness initiative at a multi-state social service organization. CM is a participatory approach that analyzes qualitative data via multi-dimensional scaling and hierarchical cluster analyses. Outputs include a number of visual depictions that allow researchers to explore complex relationships among sets of the data. Results from this study indicated that participants (N = 64), all of whom were employees of the agency, conceptualized organizational wellness via an eight-cluster solution, or Concept Map. Priority areas of this framework, specifically importance and feasibility, were also explored. After a brief review of pertinent literature, this article explicates the CM methodology utilized in this study, describes results, discusses lessons learned, and identifies apt areas for future research.     

Class matters: interviewing across social class boundaries

In this paper, we explore the methodological implications of conducting qualitative interviews when researchers and participants come from different social classes. Singling out class on its own terms, rather than considering it as an auxiliary structural factor, we examine the unique challenges that arise during cross-class interviews. Such challenges, we contend, require researcher reflexivity about how researcher–participant interactions unfold and the ways in which knowledge is generated during the interview process. In our discussion, we draw on Bourdieu’s cultural view of social class to argue that cross-class dynamics between the researcher and the participant – along with the normalization of middle-class values often inherent in interview questions – create potential obstacles to establishing rapport and facilitating fertile conversation. We use examples from our own field research in a U.S. fast-food chain to illustrate these barriers. We also provide practical recommendations to researchers regarding how they can minimize class-based biases, reduce class saliency, and gain awareness of their own class positions during cross-class interviews.     

Research Methodology and Community Participation: A Decade of Indigenous Social Science Research in Canada

Those engaged in community‐based participatory research often comment on tensions between social scientific and community values, yet little systematic evidence exists about the relationship between social science research methodologies and community participation. We analyze nearly 500 peer‐reviewed articles published between 2005 and 2015 on Indigenous issues in Canada, where policies encourage participatory research methods with disempowered groups. We find that research that includes Indigenous participation is more likely to include Indigenous epistemologies and participatory evidence sources and analysis methods. We also find that peer‐reviewed research involving Indigenous participants often fails to go beyond minimum levels of consultation required by policies.     

Relationships and the Research Process: Participatory Action Research and Social Work

Social science research methods are experiencing a paradigm shift in that participatory research methods, in many cases relegated to second-class status, are gaining credibility as valid and legitimate ways to engage in scholarly and solid research. In social work, participatory research is one more way social workers can engage with participants as partners in the process of generating knowledge and transforming society. This article discusses a particular type of participatory research called Participatory Action Research (PAR). PAR is explained and an example of how PAR has been used is offered. This article offers a discussion of how PAR is consistent with the core values of social work, especially those values of partnership, relationship, and social change. Finally, the article offers social work researchers a framework for engaging in liberatory research.     

Re-evaluating standards of human subjects protection for sensitive health data in social media networks

This study addresses ethical questions about conducting health science research using network data from social media platforms. We provide examples of ethically problematic areas related to participant consent, expectation of privacy, and social media networks. Further, to illustrate how researchers can maintain ethical integrity while leveraging social media networks, we describe a study that demonstrates the ability to use social media to identify individuals affected by cancer. We discuss best practices and ethical guidelines for studying social media network data, including data collection, analysis, and reporting.     

Participatory action research and researcher’s responsibilities: an experience with an Indigenous community

This paper seeks to explore the relational participatory action research (PAR) frameworks that have been developed to allow non-Indigenous researchers, along with Indigenous co-researcher participants, to learn and honour Indigenous stories. Specifically, in the context of PAR research in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh, we outline: (a) potential challenges between Indigenous research paradigms and Western research paradigms, (b) the situation of the non-Indigenous researcher in relation to the Indigenous community, (c) challenges associated with the non-Indigenous researcher’s selection of a research site, (d) collaboration throughout the research process and (e) the processes of developing and maintaining responsibilities. The aim is not to offer simple answers to such challenges, but to highlight the manner in which such processes can be addressed. This research may provide practical insight for future non-Indigenous researchers working with Indigenous communities through a participatory sharing process with Indigenous co-researcher participants, Elders, leaders, knowledge-holders and youths.     

How to search a social network

We address the question of how participants in a small world experiment are able to find short paths in a social network using only local information about their immediate contacts. We simulate such experiments on a network of actual email contacts within an organization as well as on a student social networking website. On the email network we find that small world search strategies using a contact’s position in physical space or in an organizational hierarchy relative to the target can effectively be used to locate most individuals. However, we find that in the online student network, where the data is incomplete and hierarchical structures are not well defined, local search strategies are less effective. We compare our findings to recent theoretical hypotheses about underlying social structure that would enable these simple search strategies to succeed and discuss the implications to social software design.     

Collecting experimental network data from interventions on critical links in workplace networks

This article describes and discusses challenges associated with interventionist network data gathering in organizational settings, with a special focus on dyadic interventions. While pointing out major risks of these approaches, we argue that collecting data in combination with dyadic network alteration methods can enable social network researchers to explore network mechanisms from a new angle and potentially benefit the members of the targeted social networks and the entire collectives, if certain research design and implementation principles are followed. We introduce a facilitated self-disclosure method for strengthening critical dyads in social networks in combination with longitudinal and retrospective network measurement. We assess the participants’ perceptions of the different stages of this process by qualitative interviews. The study illustrates that experimental network data collection includes some extra challenges in addition to the many challenges of observational network data collection but participants also reported practical benefits that would not be gained through observational network surveys alone. The results highlight the importance of early and continuous communication during the data collection process with all research participants, not just the management, and the benefits of sharing more of the preliminary results. The lessons learnt through this study can inform the design of experimental network data collection to prioritize the preferences of the participants and their benefits.     

‘Building Bridges’

Abstract

‘Building bridges’ is a metaphor we have used to describe a collaborative research process involving social work academic and senior practitioners from government and non-government child protection and family service organizations in Victoria, Australia. The purpose of the research was to develop a ‘practice-generated approach to policy implementation’ in child protection practice. The research sought to explore the appropriateness of social constructionist approaches for child protection practice that might enhance the existing risk paradigm. This article aims to critically evaluate the process of ‘building bridges’ and its outcomes, by focusing on how potential and actual differences between organizational contexts, namely universities and various service-providing organizations, may influence relationships between theory and practice. We critically reflect on our research process comparing it with idealized forms of collaborative research discussed in the literature.     

Consent requires a relationship: rethinking group consent and its timing in ethnographic research

ABSTRACT

Activist groups in ethnographic research re-negotiated our Ethics Committee’s expected order of securing consent before data collection, demonstrating the importance of researchers taking time to build relationships first. Although the Ethics Committee expected us to obtain group consent, the literature provides little guidance on how to do this. We developed a Memorandum of Understanding to summarize what forms of participant observation each group agreed to and how we would reciprocate. In this article, we (re)conceptualize consent, using analogies to consent in social contract theory and sexual relations to offer a critical perspective on what constitutes consent. We argue that taking time to build relationships before expecting research participants to consent and replacing informed consent with a negotiated agreement is a more ethical approach. We advocate for Ethics Committees to expand the meaning of ‘informed consent’ and review its timing, especially for ethnographic research with groups.     

Research integrity,image manipulation,and anonymizing photographs in visual social science research

Undocumented alterations to research images, defined in this piece as image manipulation, may represent a case of research misconduct. What constitutes image manipulation, particularly when images of human participants used in research need to be adjusted for protection of participant confidentiality? In this article, conceptual clarifications of the definition of image manipulation, image management, and research integrity are developed and adapted to the context of visual social research. Using these definitions, a series of recommendations for notifying human participants of image management techniques via the informed consent processes and a set of guidelines for managing images of identifiable human participants in research in visual studies research are developed.     

Where Are the Missing Coauthors? Authorship Practices in Participatory Research

Originally marginal, participatory research has become an increasingly important methodology in the social, biophysical, and interdisciplinary sciences. The overall increase in publications based on participatory research has raised questions about crediting the contributions of nonacademic collaborators. Using qualitative and quantitative methods, we analyzed trends and patterns in authorship and acknowledgment practices in a sample of 262 journal articles reporting on participatory research on rural livelihoods published from 1975 to 2013. Six percent of the researchers recognized the intellectual contributions of their nonacademic collaborators with coauthorship and 51 percent with acknowledgment. Through interviews with lead authors of coauthored articles, we analyzed factors that shaped whether authorship was shared with nonacademic collaborators. Despite facing numerous barriers, researchers were motivated to coauthor in order to recognize intellectual contributions, practice research ethics, and work toward epistemic decolonization. We argue that coauthorship can be an important component of epistemic justice in participatory research and encourage participatory researchers to discuss authorship with their nonacademic collaborators as a routine component of engaged scholarship. We also note that nonacademics’ contributions to scientific knowledge need to be taken into account in understandings of the practice of science.     

Using live supervision to teach counselling skills to social work students

This article reports on a research project which explored how anxiety can be managed when social work students receive live supervision as they are learning counselling skills. Eight social work students volunteered to participate in an eight session project in which they role played counselling sessions and received live supervision of their work. Their subjective experience of live supervision was elicited via survey reported surveys over the course of the project. They also submitted pre-and post-project recordings of their counselling role plays which were evaluated for changes in skill level. The participants’ survey results showed that, over the course of the project, each participant became less anxious about live supervision and came to find it a valuable learning experience. Their recorded role plays all showed improvements in skill level across a range of domains. The authors contend the establishment and maintenance of positive and trusting relationships between participants and between participants and the supervisor was crucial to the success of this project, as was attention to power dynamics and differences in learning styles. These results suggest that, under the right conditions, live supervision can be a valuable addition to counselling skills teaching strategies with social work students.     

A Case Study Using Photovoice to Explore Racial and Social Identity Among Young Black Men: Implications for Social Work Research and Practice

This article describes an exploratory qualitative case study using a research method novel to social work known as Photovoice. This case study of the Photovoice process assesses its value as a community-based participatory research (CBPR) method with marginalized communities within social work research. Photovoice was used to engage young Black men as researchers into their own lived experience. Through a photographic and group participatory project, participants discussed how intersections of race, gender, and sexuality affect their lives and health. While this methodology has proliferated within public health literature, little research exists within social work. Photovoice represents a research well-aligned with core social work values of empowerment and social justice. This method offers our profession a participatory, action-oriented tool to inform practice and policy and does so in the voices of communities who often go unheard.     

Making Connections: Community Organizing,Empowerment Planning,and Participatory Research in Participatory Evaluation

This article shows the intersections of participatory research, popular education, empowerment planning, and community organizing with participatory evaluation. It argues that a truly successful participatory evaluation involves participants in guiding and even conducting the research, doing a process of self- and program study, creating plans for change, and organizing themselves for implementing these plans. Next, the chapter shows how these elements played out in a participatory evaluation of a community organizing training and technical assistance project in Toledo, Ohio. The first year of the project was facilitated by participatory evaluation that helped identify early successes and problems so participants could make programmatic changes early in the process. The telling of the story also develops practices of participatory evaluation, including planning the evaluation, doing the research and adapting it to changing conditions, uncovering creative tensions, participatory validity checking, and linking the process to planning and action. The chapter concludes with some lessons for participatory evaluation practice.     

On the Road to Damascus: First Steps towards Changing the Relations of Disability Research Production

This paper distinguishes between participatory and emancipatory research, and discusses how both differ from other research practice. A further distinction is made between material and social relations of disability research production. It is argued that, although there are significant constraints imposed by the material relations of research production, genuine progress can still be made in changing the social relations of disability research. Based on the experience of doing research commissioned by organisations of disabled people and other work carried out within a framework of 'user's perspectives' on services and policy, the discussion focuses on the lessons we have learnt-and those we still need to learn-about how to change the relations of research production. Consultation between researchers and disabled people, subjecting research to critical scrutiny, and making researchers accountable to disabled people are suggested as key issues in the development of participatory research.     

Role‐Playing and Playing Roles: The Person,Player, and Persona in Fantasy Role‐Playing

In fantasy role‐playing games, participants collectively create and play fantasy personas in an imaginary universe by using a vast system of rules that function as guidelines for make‐believe action and interaction. Consequently, role‐playing games obligate participants to occupy a liminal role located in the boundaries of persona, player, and person. This study, based on approximately ninety hours of participant observation and forty interviews with thirty role‐players, explores how role‐players actively negotiate these symbolic boundaries: how role‐players carve out distinct spheres of meaning between themselves, their fantasy personas, and status as players of these games. It also illustrates how these distinctions fail. Boundaries erupt and role‐players prove unable to compartmentalize themselves so discretely. Through the lens of these games, we can examine simplified and exaggerated dynamics and entertain the possibility that we are all players located at the liminal margins between the people we believe ourselves to be and the personas we perform in situated social encounters.