Community-Based Participatory Research: Foreword to Next Week's Guest Post

Hello Curious Learner,

Next week the Quali Q Blog will have its very first guest! My friend and colleague, Dr. Richard Oster, will be talking about his strengths-based Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) with Indigenous communities and partners. I believe many of the Quali Q readers are somewhat familiar with CBPR so this post is just a brief foreword to set the stage for Richard’s post.

CBPR is a viable research approach for working with people who are part of communities that have been historically marginalized and/or negatively portrayed in the media. Often, these communities are also the most affected by the health disparities that exist in our societies. CBPR represents an effective approach to foster awareness of, and familiarity with, sociocultural factors that may shape people’s realities. Minkler & Wallerstein  (2008) (my go-to book for CBPR in health) characterizes CBPR with a set of core principles that include: 1) being participatory, 2) fostering cooperation from community members and researchers, 3) promoting co-learning, 4) promoting capacity building, 5) enabling participants’ control over their realities, and 6) achieving both research and action through the research process.

The principles of CBPR enable participants to decide on the most appropriate ways to create an exchange among themselves and researchers, as well as actively participate in the planning and implementation of data collection strategies. Most importantly, participation in CBPR needs to be coherent with the ethics of participants. There is a paper by Edwards, Lund, & Gibson (2008) on ethical validity that I highly recommend to anyone engaging in CBPR.  As a CBPR researcher, I have followed the principles of CBPR to foster meaningful relationships with communities, and to avoid token forms of participation that only reinforce power differentials between the researcher (myself) and participants.  

Next week, Richard will share with you his perspective on CBPR with Indigenous communities and what it has done for him as a learner/researcher. It’s an incredible post and you don’t want to miss it!

Talk soon,

Maira