Participatory Research

Synonyms

Community-based participatory research

Definition

Participatory research is an approach to research that emphasizes equitable involvement and shared decision making of community members, organizational representatives, and researchers in all aspects of the research process, ranging from the choice of research question through the interpretation, dissemination, and application of results (Israel, Eng, Schulz, & Parker, 2005). While there has been longstanding recognition that meaningful, ongoing collaboration between communities and researchers is essential to the design and conduct of research that will ethically address community concerns and translate research findings into sustainable public health gains, there has been a resurgence of interest in the participatory approach to health research due to the confluence of two trends. First, researchers have faced the disconcerting fact that many promising findings published in the academic literature are never translated into...