Action Research

Based upon expansions of indigenous research methodologies in the literature, researchers are encouraged to understand indigenous research conceptualization and implementation within various communities. The purpose of this review is to outline six tenets or principles that are intended to engage researchers in practices that privilege the voices and goals of indigenous populations: indigenous identity development; indigenous paradigmatic lens; reflexivity and power sharing; critical immersion; participation and accountability; and methodological flexibility. Future research directions for expanding and operationalizing principles of indigenous research practices are also provided.

This article describes the use of participatory visual and multimedia methods as part of a participatory action research carried out in a highly degraded urban area of a metropolis. The project was developed by the ‘I love Portacapuana’ committee in collaboration with community psychology lab and 180 undergraduate psychology students of the University of Naples Federico II. The joint use of visual tools such as photographs and videos with Internet-based collaborative work groups – through social networks such as Facebook – has proved effective in interpreting the needs of local citizens. This process has also involved a thorough analysis in terms of strengths and weaknesses as well as opportunities and threats in the local context. Indeed, the integration of visual tools into the broader framework of community diagnosis has fostered an interactive dialogue between the local community, researchers and local authorities. This, in turn, has lead to the outlining of a series of intervention strategies for local urban regeneration.

In the context of a call for public health research to address social challenges and transform communities and society, research translation has increasingly become an imperative in South Africa. Research translation seeks to improve real-world settings and enhance quality of life by applying research-generated knowledge. These goals are shared by proponents of participatory action research (PAR). However, the way in which research is pursued constitutes a major focus for PAR, where the paradigmatic position influences how we relate to knowledge and people, and whether and how we achieve the goals concerned. This article contrasts the meta-theoretical positioning of PAR with that of research translation as it is pursued within public health circles, and then argues how PAR both challenge and optimise the espoused goals of research translation through its accent on co-learning, knowledge co-construction, social action and the dialectic between research and action. We offer two African-centred examples of community-engaged research focusing on violence prevention, and safety and peace promotion to illustrate how the participatory mechanisms of empowerment and agency, knowledge co-construction and knowledge sharing foster research translation. Attention to power dynamics, exemplified through researcher reflexivity is emphasised as a key challenge for researchers wishing to address public health challenges.

Action research (AR) can be an effective form of ‘on the job’ training. However, it is critical that AR cycles can be appropriately recorded in order to contribute to reflection and learning. One form of recording is for coresearchers to keep a diary. We found no previous literature describing the use of diaries in AR in sub-Saharan Africa. We therefore use this paper to reflect on how diaries were used by district health management teams in the PERFORM project. We share five lessons from our experience. First, it is important to foster ownership of the diary by the people who are responsible for filling it in. Second, the purpose of keeping a diary needs to be clear and shared between researchers and practitioners from the very beginning. Third, diaries should be allowed to evolve. Fourth, it is a challenge for busy practitioners to record the reflection and learning processes that they go through. Last, diaries on their own are not sufficient to capture reflection and learning. In conclusion, there is no best way for practitioners to keep a diary; rather the focus should be on ensuring that an AR recording process (whether diary or otherwise) is locally owned and complements the specific practice setting.

This piece is an attempt to synthesize our learnings about poverty and action research using the financial diaries methodology among the urban poor at Ramanagaram, a town 60 km away from Bangalore, India. We introduced a participatory component in the financial diaries methodology by asking our respondents (all women) to be the diary writers. This helped narrowing the gap between the researchers and researched towards understanding data on the lives of the poor. It spurred an on-going relationship with our diary writers and enabled us to take a critical look at several mainstream conclusions about poverty. For example, eating out and expenditure on snacks by women, especially in women-headed households is not to be considered a temptation good but an expense arising from the informal nature of her employment, allowing her little time towards household chores. Similarly, buying a TV (sometimes by borrowing money) was often prompted by the drudgery of onerous job–work done from home, rather than from the need to emulate the Joneses. A small self-help livelihoods venture grew out of the interaction, which we helped setup. This study reinforces the need to have more action research with the poor, if meaningful solutions need be sought to their problems.