Doing Community-Based Research Perspectives from the Field

About this book

Community-based research (CBR) offers useful insights into the challenges associated with conducting research and ensuring that it generates both excellent scholarship and positive impacts in the communities where the research takes place. This depends on two important variables: the capacity of CBR to generate good information, and the extent to which CBR is understood and constructed as a two-way relationship that includes a set of responsibilities for both researchers and communities.

Offering expert advice on the crucial relationship between communities and researchers, the authors outline the main stages of the CBR process to guide researchers and practitioners. They discuss the reasons for conducting CBR, provide tips on how to design research, and detail how researchers and communities should get to know one another, as well as how best to work in the field and how to turn fieldwork into research that counts. By focusing on the lessons learned from the use of CBR, the authors make the messages, lessons, and practices applicable to a variety of research settings.

Drawing collectively from decades of community-based research experience and including vignettes from researchers from around the world who share their CBR experiences, Doing Community-Based Research is an essential book for scholars, students, practitioners, and the educated public.

Contents

Figures vii
Boxes ix
Acknowledgments ix

PART ONE INTRODUCTION TO CBR
1 Introduction 3
2 The Case for Community-Based Research 16

PART TWO GETTING TO KNOW ONE ANOTHER
3 Understanding and Shaping Capacity for CBR 43
4 Building Projects 71
5 Research Design 108
6 First Steps 148

PART THREE WORKING IN THE FIELD
7 In the Field 175
8 CBR: Methods and Techniques 199

PART FOUR AFTER THE FIELDWORK
9 Staying in Touch: Analysis 225
10 Staying in Touch: Change 245
11 Conclusion 268

Appendix: Sampling of Research Protocol Agreements 277
References 287
Contributors 315
Index 319

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Biography

Greg Halseth is professor of geography and Canada Research Chair in Rural and Small Town Studies at the University of Northern British Columbia. Sean Markey is associate professor in the School of Resource and Environmental Management at Simon Fraser University. Laura Ryser is research manager in the Rural and Small Town Studies Program at the University of Northern British Columbia. Don Manson is a community-based researcher and educator working with the communities and people of northern British Columbia.