OMHARN Multicultural Health Conference:

Community perspective – how to advance multicultural research

Community Involvement in Research

None A Lot

Top-down Consultation Collaboration Partnership Community-led

(Adapted from Winer & Ray, 2000)

Suggested Steps in CBR

Background work (‘getting ready’)

Establish the partnership

Collaboratively Design the Research Project

Collect the data

Take Action / Advocate for Change

Analyze and interpret the data

Disseminate (share) your Findings

Training and

Building Capacity(ongoing)

Monitor & Evaluate

your Activities

and Engage in

Critical Reflection(ongoing)

Research Re-defined: Opportunities The emergence of community agency led research is re-defining research relationships, processes and outcomes in new and interesting ways

Academic-community-participant relationship is being reconfigured/blurred in interesting ways

New areas of research priorities

Participatory involvement of community members is being taken to new, deeper levels

Enhanced role of dissemination and advocacy

Critical Issues in Community Agency Led Research Projects

Challenges of promoting equitable relationship between academics and community

Challenges of working closely with marginalized community members

Quality and equity of participation of community

New Ethical Issues/Dilemmas

Strengthening political weight of community agency led research

Other Challenges

Funding Constraints and negative pressures from funding agencies

Human Resources

Access to other resources (eg data analysis softwares, online journals)

Time

Capacity

Incentives and recognition

Best Practices in Research Collaboration

Develop and engage in collaborative models of research design, implementation and writing (results in much richer research questions, better methodology and high quality reports)

Don’t expect community agencies to do all the outreach and recruitment work (there is an ‘institutional cost’ on community agencies to do recruitment)

Build in adequate funding to support/remunerate participation from community agencies and community members (eg admin costs, research time stipend for community agency partners, training costs)

Ensure proper recognition of community agencies/groups for their role in the research (not just as a footnote or acknowledgement but as co-authors wherever appropriate)

Broaden dissemination activities (beyond journal publications)

Get involved in advocacy (don’t leave dissemination and advocacy work to community)

Hire community members (not just graduate students) as community/peer researchers or RAs

Best Practices in Research

Collaboration