Participatory Research Comes of Age: Research Methods for Social Transformation

By Danny Burns, Jo Howard and Sonia M. Ospina

At a time of accelerating social, political and environmental crises, there is an urgent need for research methods that support social transformation. Over the last fifty years or so, participatory research has emerged as a challenge to traditional research paradigms. It has now come of age as a robust alternative for understanding, analysing and taking action for social change.

There has been an explosion of participatory methods over the last two decades, which has been accompanied by greater awareness and use of participatory and action-oriented forms of research, participatory visual, creative and digital methods, and participatory approaches to evaluation. Meanwhile, critiques of participation as co-opted or manipulative still lurk, and which need to be addressed. We feel therefore that the state of the art of participatory research needs to be presented and curated to become accessible to a wider audience, and understood in the context of the intellectual foundations, the debates, the practice challenges, and learning about the experiences and details on how these methods have been used successfully.

A unique feature of The SAGE Handbook of Participatory Research and Inquiry is that all methods and inquiry practices featured are done in the context of goals of social transformation with a social justice lens. Further, at a time when development researchers and practitioners are concerned with how to decolonise our thinking, teaching and practice, this Handbook includes experiences from most regions in the world, and gives explicit attention to including perspectives from the North and from the South. It is multidisciplinary, and includes examples from many disciplines, fields, and domains, from international development studies to organization and management studies, to policy and leadership, encompassing a wide range of complex challenges and arenas such as health, rights, law, and community development.

Validity of Participatory Research

Part of the challenge to bring participatory research into the mainstream, has been to demonstrate that it represents a viable research alternative (and complement) to traditional qualitative and quantitative methodologies. This Handbook demonstrates that participatory research methods:

o Are rooted in a strong, diverse yet coherent intellectual tradition

o Are epistemologically exploratory and plural

o Are robust in design, facilitation and ethical principles

o Draw further validity through the research process which is negotiated and evolved with participants as co-researchers

o Develop actionable knowledge and praxis.

Over the years, these methods have become more accepted in mainstream academia, and can now be considered as essential amongst the methods that are used in current social science.

Intellectual foundations

Participatory research today stands on the shoulders of the innovators of the 1970s, and the conversations and collaborations between them – Freire, Fals Borda, Budd Hall, Rajesh Tandon, Boal, Chambers. Their work inspired the next generation of participatory and action researchers who drew especially on feminist thinking and power theories to enrich and extend participatory research - Cornwall, Gaventa, Maguire, Brydon-Miller, Greenwood, Bradbury, Reason, Marshall amongst others. The current generation of participatory researchers and practitioners are drawing on these foundations, and on the debates, critiques and challenges, to expand the epistemological boundaries of participatory research.

Debates and learning

Participatory research today is enabling cutting edge thinking and learning about the nature of knowledge and the purpose and practice of research.

· It embraces extended epistemologies and new epistemological postures (from the South), indigenous worldviews, systems thinking and complexity theory.

· It is extending our understanding of research ethics as contextual, iterative and relational.

· It demonstrates how facilitation is as important as design; and how dialogue is at the core of the assumptions and practices of participatory research.

· Its action orientation deepens understanding of how knowledge is generated through practice

· Inclusion and power – distribution of researcher role and control, reflexive work on who is included when, and how … and where our blind spots may be

In putting together this Handbook, our aim has been to provide participatory researchers and inquirers with a ‘go to’ place where they can learn about a method, understand the steps needed to implement it, engage with the ethics and practice challenges via a case study, and also find out more about the intellectual underpinnings of the method. It has also been our aim to bring together a social justice-oriented participatory research ‘community of practice’ that can link to other communities (e.g. Action Research+, CARN, ALARA, Highlander Centre, COADY, PRIA, Praxis, Reflection-Action) to strengthen, deepen and expand our learning, influence and potential to bring about transformative change. We believe that it is through sharing, collaborating, dialogue and reflection in such spaces that we can learn and innovate in our methodologies and our practice.

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Book details

The SAGE Handbook of Participatory Research and Inquiry

Two Volume Set

Edited by:

Danny Burns - Institute of Development Studies (IDS), UK

Jo Howard - Institute of Development Studies, UK

Sonia M. Ospina - New York University, USA

August 2021 | 1 168 pages | SAGE Publications Ltd

About the authors

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Danny Burns has worked at the Institute of Development Studies since 2010. He is a research professor and was research team leader of the Participation, Inclusion and Social Change team for 9 years. He was formerly co-director of SOLAR (Social and Organisational Learning as Action Research) at the University of the West of England and before that he worked for the University of Bristol. Danny has directed more than 25 participatory action research programmes. He is currently director of CLARISSA (Child Labour Action-Research-Innovation in South and South East Asia) a programme working on worst forms of child labour.

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Jo Howard is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, where she leads the IDS Participation, Inclusion and Social Change Research Cluster, and convenes the MA programme in Power, Participation and Social Change. After working with an NGO for six years in Central America, she trained as a researcher and has worked in the UK, Latin America, Africa and Asia. She uses participatory action research methods with community groups to promote and support processes of accountability, empowerment, citizenship and inclusion; she also convenes short courses and tailored learning processes with NGOs, INGOs and government departments, to enable them to use participatory approaches, reflective practice and increase knowledge exchange.

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Sonia M. Ospina is Professor of Public Management and Policy at the NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, sociologist by training, and an expert in qualitative and participatory research. Her interest in dynamics of democratic governance has motivated research on social change leadership, social innovation, and public accountability in various geographical settings. She is presently working with Indigenous women leaders in Colombia to support their leadership and develop insights about collective leadership. She co-founded an international network of leadership scholars, Co-Lead Net (2015) and the Research Center for Leadership in Action (2003), which she led until 2015.