User:Jerichorajninger/Participatory action research

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Participatory action research (PAR) is an approach to action research emphasizing participation and action by members of communities directly affected by that research.

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Overview

PAR can be thought of as a guiding paradigm to influence and democratize the creation of knowledge making, and ground it in real community needs and learning. Knowledge production controlled by elites can sometimes further oppress marginalized populations. PAR can be a way of overcoming the ineffectiveness and elitism of conventional schooling and science, and the negative effects of market forces and industry on the workplace, community life and sustainable livelihoods.

Fundamentally, PAR pushes against the notion that experiential distance is required for objectivity in scientific and sociological research. Instead, PAR values embodied knowledge beyond "gated communities" of scholarship, bridging academia and social movements such that research and advocacy — often thought to be mutually exclusive — become intertwined. Rather than be confined by academia, participatory settings are believed to have "social value." PAR embodies the maxim of "with not for," confronting ideological gaps that have historically deepened ruts of inequality and injustice.

Criminal justice

Compared to other fields, PAR frameworks in criminal justice are relatively new. But growing support for community-based alternatives to the criminal justice system has sparked interest in PAR in criminological settings. Participatory action research in criminal justice includes system-impacted people themselves in research and advocacy conducted by academics or other experts. Because system-impacted people hold experiential knowledge of the conditions and practices of the justice system, they may be able to more effectively expose and articulate problems with that system. Many people who have been incarcerated are also able to share with researchers facets of the justice system that are invisible to the outside world or are difficult to understand without first-hand experience. Proponents of PAR in criminal justice believe that including those most impacted by the justice system in research and advocacy is crucial because the presence of these individuals precludes the possibility of misunderstanding or compounding harms of the justice system.

Participants in PAR may also hold knowledge or education in more traditional academic fields, like law, policy or government that can inform criminological research. But PAR in criminology bridges the epistemological gap between knowledge gained through academia and through lived experience, connecting research to justice reform.

Ethics (adding citations, some scattered sentences)

Given the often delicate power balances between researchers and participants in PAR, there have been calls for a code of ethics to guide the relationship between researchers and participants in a variety of PAR fields. Norms in research ethics involving humans include respect for the autonomy of individuals and groups to deliberate about a decision and act on it. This principle is usually expressed through the free, informed and ongoing consent of those participating in research (or those representing them in the case of persons lacking the capacity to decide). Another mainstream principle is the welfare of participants who should not be exposed to any unfavourable balance of benefits and risks with participation in research aimed at the advancement of knowledge, especially those that are serious and probable. Since privacy is a factor that contributes to people's welfare, confidentiality obtained through the collection and use of data that are anonymous (e.g. survey data) or anonymized tends to be the norm. Finally, the principle of justice—equal treatment and concern for fairness and equity—calls for measures of appropriate inclusion and mechanisms to address conflicts of interests.

While the choice of appropriate norms of ethical conduct is rarely an either/or question, PAR implies a different understanding of what consent, welfare and justice entail. For one thing the people involved are not mere 'subjects' or 'participants'. They act instead as key partners in an inquiry process that may take place outside the walls of academic or corporate science. As Canada's Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans suggests, PAR requires that the terms and conditions of the collaborative process be set out in a research agreement or protocol based on mutual understanding of the project goals and objectives between the parties, subject to preliminary discussions and negotiations. Unlike individual consent forms, these terms of reference (ToR) may acknowledge collective rights, interests and mutual obligations. While they are legalistic in their genesis, they are usually based on interpersonal relationships and a history of trust rather than the language of legal forms and contracts.

Another implication of PAR ethics is that partners must protect themselves and each other against potential risks, by mitigating the negative consequences of their collaborative work and pursuing the welfare of all parties concerned. This does not preclude battles against dominant interests. Given their commitment to social justice and transformative action, some PAR projects may be critical of existing social structures and struggle against the policies and interests of individuals, groups and institutions accountable for their actions, creating circumstances of danger. Public-facing action can also be dangerous for some marginalized populations, for example, survivors of domestic violence.

In some fields of PAR it is believed that an ethics of participation should go beyond avoidance of harm. For participatory settings that engage with marginalized or oppressed populations, including criminal justice, PAR can be mobilized to actively support individuals. An "ethic of empowerment" encourages researchers to consider participants as standing on equal epistemological footing, with equal say in research decisions. Within this ethical framework, PAR doesn't just affect change in the world but also directly improves the lives of the research participants. An "ethic of empowerment" may require a systemic shift in the way researchers view and talk about oppressed communities — often as degenerate or helpless. If not practiced in a way that actively considers the knowledge of participants, PAR can become manipulative. Participatory settings in which participants are tokenized or serve only as sources of information without joint power in decision-making processes can exploit rather than empower.

On the matter of welfare, empowerment through recognition and 'being heard' may be more important to the research than are privacy and confidentiality. It is important to strike a balance between allowing privacy and confidentiality, and respect for individuals and groups who wish to be heard and identified for their contribution to research. The former may be hard to reconcile with PAR. The latter can be shown through proper quoting, acknowledgements, co-authorship, or the granting of intellectual property rights. Payment may also be appropriate, depending on the context of the research and participation.

By definition, PAR is always a step into the unknown, raising new questions and creating new risks over time. Given its emergent properties and responsiveness to social context and needs, PAR cannot limit discussions and decisions about ethics to the design and proposal phase. Norms of ethical conduct and their implications may have to be revisited as the project unfolds. This has implications, both in resources and practice, for the ability to subject the research to true ethical oversight in the way that traditional research has come to be regulated.