Community-based Participatory Research

Jackson Voelkel
Portland State University

Introduction

Climate Change Resiliency

Large swaths of research are highly technical
Often GIS-based
  • Sea Level Change
  • Flood Plane Delineation Change
  • Increase in Forest Fire Susceptibility
  • Urban Heat Island effect

How do we create an accurate description of true resilience/vulnerability to climate change?

Engage Stakeholders:

Engagement >>>>> Involvement

  • Action Research (Peters & Robinson, 1984)
    • Research for change.
  • Participatory Action Research (Whyte, 1991)
    • Collaborative research for change.
  • Cooperative Inquiry (Heron & Reason, 2001; Heron, 1971)
    • With, rather than for

Community-based Participatory Research (CBPR)

“Community-based participatory research is a collaborative research approach that is designed to ensure and establish structures for participation by communities affected by the issue being studied, representatives of organizations, and researchers in all aspects of the research process to improve health and well-being through taking action, including social change.”
Viswanathan et al. 2004;
Created by researchers after meta-analysis of 55 conceptual articles with similarities to CBPR.

How does CBPR fit in with other research theory?

Basics of CBPR:

  • "Community-based" !
  • Grassroots
    • Bring people together as one, unified problem-solving machine
  • Not just designed to be "bottom-up", but focuses on being "not top-down"
  • Skirts around status quo and power

Is it phronetic in nature?

Flyvbjerg says Phronetic Research:
  • Focuses on Values
    • CBPR indirectly does this, however isn't a requirement
  • Places Power at the CORE of analysis
    • One of the biggest differences!
Phronetic: "Focus on the rectangle!"

Very similar to CBPR, however it incorporates a community of experts
CBPR: "It's time to push aside the rectangle!"

By going around the power, we form outlines of the power indirectly.

Internal Components

Co-Production

  • Enhances effectiveness of Research
  • Applies inherent knowledge in geographic/cultural groups
Of note:


Joined-up (Agyeman, 2003): "Lets focus on everything, but consolidate for practicality!"

By gathering community experts we subvert the idea of getting everyone's voices, but are able to gain of the benefits of CBPR
...
AKA, how a republic works

Co-Opportunity

  • Cooperation as a mechanism for a better, fairer world
A shift from hierarchical, centralized, and massively damaging Capitalism and Communism to a parallel co-operation, where most of the real action happens at a local community level.
Grant, 2010

Considerations in Implementation

Benefits

  • Greater participation rates
  • Increased external validity
  • Decreased loss of follow up
  • Increased individual and community capacity

Issues

  • Selection bias (in recruitment)
  • Decreased/No randomization
  • Highly motivated groups not representative of actual study population

Ethical Considerations of CBPR

Community Representation

  • Individuals controlling the focus (community member or the research)
  • Low representation
  • Extremely vocal sub-communities
    • Eastmoreland Neighborhood Association / Eastmoreland Tree Committee

Dissemination of Results

  • Accessability
    • Physical access
    • Interpretability

  • Reinforcement of negative stereotypes
    • Social, economic, disempowerment.

IRB

  • Research should benefit all, not a small population.

Where CBPR Fits into my research

Collabarative Mapping

Example: Portland Climate Action Collaborative project with Livable Lents
  • Used map-based surveys
  • Asked residents about improvements
  • Given generalized topics to keep scope limited
    • Community Space
    • Economic Development
    • Health/Crime/Safety
  • Resulting data mapped to show trends of opinions
  • BPS actively using the data to make community-driven positive changes
The project used Suprmap for creating the spatial surveys:
www.suprmap.org

Questions?