Powering Community through Community-Based Research
I enjoyed Toronto Carnival this past weekend. I spent time with family, danced, waved my Jamaican flag, and ate delicious Caribbean foods. A 10 out of 10 long weekend!
Each week, I focus on a different theme in my online content and this week’s theme is community-based research. As a social scientist, research is very important to me because of the stories research tells us. For me, data reveals our understanding of the world and societies and I see my role as a researcher to collect and analyze data that uncovers these stories.
Community-based research is research that is led by community members and centres their needs and priorities. Als called participatory research, the Arctic Institute for Community-Based Research (AICBR) outlines six principles that guide this type of research:
i. Participatory
ii. Cooperative
iii. Promotes co-learning
iv. Deepens capacity-building and system development
v. Empowers community embers in ways that are meaningful to them
vi. Combines research with action to create change
Communty-based research is a methodological approach that challenges the understanding that research is objective and value-free and instead recognizes that social research is often subjective and laden with values that reproduced power and privilege. Traditionally, research is led by academics and institutions that are often far removed from the communities they study. This gap between researchers and communities often led to research causing harm to communities and reinforcing negative stereotypes and biases. In this type of research, communities are important stakeholders who co-design studies that are significant to them. Academic institutions are partnerships in research that provide expertise and resources to communities and must be respectful of the expertise, knowledge, and values of communities. Thus, community-based research challenges assumptions that only academics and institutions create knowledge.
For equity-deserving groups such as Black, queer, gender-diverse, and disabled communities, community-based research has been particularly powerful because it allows these communities to set research agendas, create partnerships, document our realities, and develop knowledge. In the HIV/AIDS movements, community-based research has been used to document the realities of the epidemic and to mobilize people to take action in ways that academic research could not. This reframing of research and questioning of power and privilege within research processes led to significant improvements that saved lives.
I love participating in participatory, or community-based research because it allows me to be in solidarity with communities that are often ignored by institutions. I enjoy learning from people and working with them to create studies that analyze issues of importance to them.
Thanks for reading my blog today. Please email me and let me know of your experiences with community-based research.
Michelle
CEO