What is participatory method of research? Explain.
Participatory research integrates scientific investigation
with education and political action. Researchers work with members of a
community to know and resolve community problems, to empower community members,
and to democratize research. The methods of participatory research include
group discussions of private experience, interviews, surveys, and analysis of
public documents. Topics that are investigated with this approach include
community issues like polluted water supplies and therefore the school
curriculum, employment issues like working conditions and unionization, and
theoretical issues about consent and resistance to domination. What is participatory method of research? Explain For social scientists
who question the traditions of being detached and value-free, and who seek an
approach that's less hierarchical which serves the interests of these with
little power, participatory research may be a valuable alternative.
Participatory research are often identified by five
characteristics: participation by the people being studied; inclusion of
popular knowledge; attention on power and empowerment; consciousness raising
and education of the participants; and political action. a particular
definition should be avoided in order that each group that does participatory
research are often liberal to develop a number of its own methods.
Participation within the research process by the people
being studied is best viewed as a continuum that has low levels of
participation, like asking people that are interviewed to read and discuss the
transcripts of their interviews, also as high levels of participation. Ideally,
community members have a big degree of participation and control, and help to
work out the main questions and overall design of the study. What is participatory method of research? Explain Second,
participatory research validates popular knowledge, personal experience and
feelings, and artistic and spiritual expressions as useful ways of knowing. If
researchers are to figure with community members as co-investigators, they need
to respect people's knowledge. Moreover, one among the rationales for community
participation in research is that the assumption that folks understand many
aspects of their situation better than outsiders do. Practitioners have used
group discussions, photography, theater, and traditional tales to draw on
popular knowledge (Barndt 1980; Luttrell 1988).
A focus on power and empowerment also distinguishes most
participatory research. "The core issue in participatory research is power.
. . the transformation of power structures and relationships also because the
empowerment of oppressed people," states Patricia Maguire in her excellent
analysis of the sector (1987, p. 37). Participatory researchers differ widely
in What is participatory method of research? Explain their positions on empowerment, and include radicals who attempt to
transform the facility structure by mobilizing peasants to wrest land from the
upper class , also as conservatives who ignore power relations and specialise
in limited improvements like building a clinic or a collective irrigation
system.
The fourth characteristic of participatory
research—consciousness raising and education—is closely associated with power.
Group discussions and projects typically plan to reduce participants' feelings
of self-blame and incompetence, and check out to relate personal problems to
unequal distributions of power within the community and therefore the society.
Participants often become visibly more confident and effective as they speak
call at discussions, learn that others share a number of their experiences, and
learn research skills and relevant technical information.
Finally, participatory research includes political action,
especially action that cultivates "critical consciousness" and is
oriented toward structural change, not toward adjusting people to oppressive
environments (Brown and Tandon 1983). Some scholars argue that "real"
participatory research must include actions that radically reduce inequality
and produce "social transformation." Research and action, from this
attitude , should be guided by a general theory like Marxism to assist identify
the underlying causes of inequality and therefore the best strategies for
changing society. What is participatory method of research? Explain Others caution against expecting to realize radical changes
because "social transformation requires . . . organizing, mobilizing,
struggle" also as knowledge (Tandon 1988, p. 12). These researchers point
to the worth of small collective actions in educating people about the local
hierarchy , creating greater solidarity and feelings of power, and providing
new knowledge about how power is maintained and challenged. Many projects
include little or no collective action and are limited to changing the behavior
of individual participants, strengthening or "creating a community network"
and "fostering critical knowledge" (Park 1978, p. 20).
In some cases, participatory research produces major
changes, as exemplified by a project with residents of alittle town within the
state of Washington. The town was getting to be destroyed by the expansion of a
dam, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was getting to disperse the
community. But with the help of Professor Russell Fox and various
undergraduates from Washington College, residents clarified their own goals for
a replacement community, learned about the design process, and produced a
town-sponsored plan for a replacement town. Their plan was accepted by the
Corps of Engineers after prolonged struggle involving the courts and therefore
the U.S. Congress. The urban area thrived and continued to involve the whole
community in planning decisions (Comstock and Fox 1982).
A study of the working conditions of bus drivers in Leeds,
England, illustrates the mixed results that are more typical of participatory
research. As a results of greater pressure at work accompanying Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher's program of deregulation, bus drivers were experiencing
increasing stress, accidents, and conflicts reception (Forrester and Ward
1989). With the assistance of professors from the University of Leeds who were
running an course program for workers, a gaggle of eight bus drivers, selected
by their local union, decided to try to to research that might investigate
stress at work and motivate the drivers' union to require action. They designed
and administered a survey of a sample of drivers and their families, studied
accident records, and measured physical signs of stress. What is participatory method of research? Explain Although the report
presenting their findings did not produce the specified action by the union,
the project was successful in many other ways—workers' stress became a part of
the agenda for the union and therefore the national government, and therefore
the report was employed by workers in other countries to document the necessity
for improved working conditions. The participants within the research gained
research skills and knowledge about work stress, and therefore the professors
produced academic papers on work stress and participatory research. The
professors had a dual accountability (as they put it) both to the bus workers
and to the university; their projects produced results that were valuable to
both groups.
Participatory research was developed primarily by Third
World researchers, and most projects are in Third World communities. within the
1970s it became clear that mainstream economic development projects were
failing to scale back poverty and inequality. In response, researchers began to
develop alternative approaches that increased the participation of the poor in
development programs and aimed toward empowering poor rural and concrete
communities also as improving their standard of living (Huizer 1979; Tandon
1981, 1988). for instance , within the Jipemoyo Project in Tanzania,
researchers and villagers investigated traditional music and dance practices
and developed cooperative, small-scale industries supported these traditions,
like the assembly of "selo drums" purchasable in urban areas (Kassam
and Mustafa 1982). In other projects, peasants and farmers participated with
agricultural and social scientists to work out the foremost appropriate and
productive farming methods. Several projects in Latin America , led by Orlando
Fals Borda and labeled "participatory action research," integrated
the knowledge of peasant activists and academics to create rural organizations
and social movements.
Participatory researchers within the Third World are closely
related to Paulo Freire, an exiled Brazilian educator with roots in Marxism and
important theory. His book Pedagogy of the Oppressed is that the most
influential add participatory research. Freire argues that teaching and
research shouldn't be dominated by experts but should be supported dialogue
with a community of oppressed people. Through dialogue and collective action,
people can develop critical consciousness, learn the talents they have to
enhance their situation, and liberate themselves. an identical approach has
been developed by the influential Highlander Research and Education Center
within the southern us . Organized by Myles Horton et al. within the 1930s,
What is participatory method of research? Explain Highlander has inspired many participatory researchers with its success in
educating and empowering poor rural people (Gaventa and Horton 1981; Gaventa et
al. 1990). Another important center of participatory research has been the
Participatory Research Network in Toronto, that specialize in course (Hall
1975, 1981).
The development of participatory research within the 1970s
was also fostered by challenges to positivist science by feminists, Marxists,
critical theorists, et al. (Bernstein 1983; Harding 1986). The critics
emphasized the links between knowledge and power. They argued that the
positivists' emphasis on objectivity, detachment, and valuefree inquiry often
masked a hidden conservative political agenda, and encouraged research that
justified domination by experts and elites and devalued oppressed people. The
critics proposed alternative paradigms that integrated research and theory with
political action, and gave the people being studied more power over the
research (Carr and Kemmis 1986; Lather 1986; Rose 1983).
The development of other paradigms, along side the emergence
of participatory research within the Third World and therefore the politicial
activism accompanying social movements of the 1960s and 1970s, sparked a spread
of participatory research projects by North American social scientists. John
Gaventa investigated political and economic oppression in Appalachian
communities, and grass-roots efforts to challenge the established order , and
Peter Park criticized mainstream sociology from the attitude of participatory
research and important theory. Health-related issues like wife-battering,
health collectives, and toxic wastes were studied by Patricia Maguire et al. ,
while researchers in education examined community efforts to enhance public
schools and participatory methods of teaching (Luttrell 1988). Issues at the
workplace like struggles for unionization are investigated by many
participatory researchers; they need documented the impact of things like
ethnic divisions and women's work culture on the success of unionization
(Bookman and Morgen 1988). What is participatory method of research? Explain Participatory research is closely associated with
several other fields. Feminist approaches to research and teaching often
closely resemble participatory research and emphasize nonhierarchical relations
between researcher and researched, raising consciousness, taking action against
sexism and other sorts of domination, and valuing expressive sorts of knowledge
(see Smith 1987; Stanley and Wise 1983). Feminists have done the bulk of the
participatory research projects in North America, but they are doing not use the
label, and feminists and participatory researchers rarely consult each other's
work.
A similar approach has been developed by William F. Whyte,
who works with representatives of managment and workers to review
organizational problems like reducing production costs, or redesigning training
programs. His approach differs from participatory research therein it gives
little attention to power and empowerment, or to consciousness raising and
education, and therefore the action component of the projects is coordinated
with management and doesn't directly challenge the prevailing hierarchy . What is participatory method of research? Explain Whyte
labels his approach "participatory action research," which can cause
confusion since an equivalent term is employed to explain Orlando Fals Borda's
very different, more radical approach.
Participatory research also overlaps with several
traditional science methods, especially participant observation, ethnography,
and intensive interviews, all of which believe empathic interpretation of
popular knowledge and everyday experience which lead researchers to be engaged
with the people being studied, not detached from them. Applied research also
focuses on social policy , but usually for the privileged—those with the cash
and class to use researchers or consultants.