Planning and implementation of a participatory evaluation strategy: A viable approach in the evaluation of community-based participatory programs addressing cancer disparities

Community-based participatory research (CBPR) has been posited as a promising methodology to address health concerns at the community level, including cancer disparities. However, the major criticism to this approach is the lack of scientific grounded evaluation methods to assess development and implementation of this type of research. This paper describes the process of development and implementation of a participatory evaluation framework within a CBPR program to reduce breast, cervical, and colorectal cancer disparities between African Americans and whites in Alabama and Mississippi as well as lessons learned. The participatory process involved community partners and academicians in a fluid process to identify common ground activities and outcomes. The logic model, a lay friendly approach, was used as the template and clearly outlined the steps to be taken in the evaluation process without sacrificing the rigorousness of the evaluation process. We have learned three major lessons in this process: (1) the importance of constant and open dialogue among partners; (2) flexibility to make changes in the evaluation plan and implementation; and (3) importance of evaluators playing the role of facilitators between the community and academicians. Despite the challenges, we offer a viable approach to evaluation of CBPR programs focusing on cancer disparities.     

Can a Poll Affect Perception of Candidate Traits?

During presidential elections, poll results frequently are presentedin the news. Reporters use these polls to tell the public whatit thinks about the presidential candidates. We argue that pollingresults tell the public what it should think about the presidentialcandidates as well. This study outlines how a character traitthat is not usually used to assess presidential candidates wasput into play during the 2004 presidential campaign. By repeatedlyascribing "stubbornness" to incumbent president George W. Bush,Democratic challenger John Kerry may have prompted this trait’sinclusion in a Los Angeles Times summer 2004 survey. The poll’sevidence that the public saw Bush as more stubborn than Kerrythen produced an attribute agenda-setting effect that strengthenedthe link between that term and Bush. Using data from the NationalAnnenberg Election Survey, we argue that the news coverage ofthis Los Angeles Times poll increased the salience of the trait"stubborn" in assessing President George W. Bush during Juneof the 2004 presidential campaign.     

Relativity Without Relativism: Reflexivity in Post-Paradigm Organization Studies

This paper shows how organization studies controls the subject through its use of representational devices. Different theoretical and methodological approaches may appear to offer epistemological guarantees concerning the validity of data about the research subject but they remain representations, beyond which we can know nothing except through representation. Research is not about wrenching truth from a recalcitrant 'reality': the devices it uses to represent its research subject create and control in the way they silence to give voice to aspects of that subject. All data are 'collaborative products' created in accordance with 'the practical procedures and background assumptions of the participating actors' (Knorr-Cetina, 1981). Thus the relations between research subject, researcher and the protocols that comprise the research process both embody and obscure power. For this reason, it is important that theory strives for a high degree of reflexivity (Marcus, 1994) in accounting for its own theorizing, as well as whatever it is that it theorizes about.
In this paper, we critically examine different research approaches, including those of Aston, to show the dangers that can arise when research is carried out without regard to reflexivity. We offer some criteria for carrying out reflexive research which, we believe, is one of the major challenges facing post-paradigm organization studies. As we shall see, reflexivity shows us how far we have come in the thirty years since Aston.