Emergence of participatory research

Engaging research respondents in participatory research (PR) methods that promote the autonomy and ‘voices’ of people defined as vulnerable has gained prominence over recent years. From the 1970s, new developments and approaches in qualitative methodologies in the health and social sciences allowed for, and indeed embraced, more creative methods of investigation in a post-modern, post-structuralist era. The result was that new and more diverse empirical approaches began to flourish across a range of different disciplines, and significantly, to address issues of vulnerability, inclusion and participation, although the connection or parity between these concepts were not always made explicit in research design and discourses. This chapter considers the emergence of PR, including participatory action research (PAR), in the context of these new and developing research methodologies in the social sciences, and in other disciplines and fields, and also explores and contextualises the concept of vulnerability and its relationship with, and relevance to, PR methods and techniques. Particular emphasis is on the role of PR in facilitating and promoting engagement with vulnerable or marginalised individuals and groups in more direct and inclusive ways.

In their 1995 review of PR, Cornwall and Jewkes asked the fundamental question, ‘if all research involves participation, what makes research participatory?’ (p 1668), and this question remains a pertinent one even today, warranting closer examination. Although the terms ‘participatory research’ and ‘participatory action research’ are often conflated or are used interchangeably at times, the former is a somewhat broad umbrella under which a number of participatory, collaborative or inclusive research methods and approaches are located. PAR, on the other hand, which emerged in the 1940s following the pioneering work of Kurt Lewin and the Tavistock Institute (see Chevalier and Buckles, 2013), emphasises specifically social change outcomes for groups, organisations or communities through action research. As Chevalier and Buckles argue (2013, p 4), developments in PAR mean that it ‘now represents a well documented tradition of active-risk taking and experimentation in social reflectivity backed up by evidential reasoning and learning through experience and real action.’ PAR also involves a diversity of approaches or techniques including participatory rural appraisal (PRA), participatory learning and action (PLA), as well as participatory visual methods and so on.