Examining Community-Engaged and Participatory Research Programs and Projects

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Background

Community-engaged and participatory research projects have greatly increased over the past few decades, creating inconsistencies in the terminology employed. Published literature employing various terms such as collaborative, engaged, involved, participatory, and partnered research, presents a challenge for the emergence of shared understanding that is essential for advancing science. Additionally, even when scholars use the same terminology (e.g., community-based, community-engaged), they can mean different things falling on the continuum of community-engaged research. The involvement of individuals with different disciplinary training, community and personal experience, and different ways of knowing and conducting research further creates challenges in identifying the knowledge base. Additionally, engaged and participatory research approaches are challenged to balance the pursuit of generalizable knowledge while accommodating the specificities of (localized) real-world contexts.

While acknowledging a history of achievement in engaged and participatory research, further advancement may depend on a willingness to pursue questions in the sociology of science. While there has been increased scrutiny into how the organization and performance of community-academic research teams influence both research conduct and outcomes, questions related to the influence of organizational and management practices on the research enterprise and the development of alternatives have garnered less attention. For example:
• How might funding cycles or other structures that govern research implementation affect partnership or scientific inquiry?
• How might the professional efficiency of publication and presentation at meetings, recognized metrics of scholarly dissemination, affect public receptivity to science and research?
• How have engaged and participatory research approaches been both challenged and advanced by the professional organization of the research enterprise?

We seek studies that include critical reflection on the practice of research and the discourse about scientific inquiry that engages community perspectives and individuals in the research processes. Such studies may examine the distribution of roles and responsibilities, benefits derived from infrastructure and implementation, and challenges experienced in community-engaged and participatory academic, clinical, and health research collaborations. The following list of topics is offered to stimulate innovative contributions to this Research Topic on the Science of Community Engagement:

• The relationship between partnership processes, research implementation, and outcomes
• The management of bias due to community involvement in the research process
• Evaluation of research implementation within community contexts
• Institutional and/or community barriers to the development of participatory and community-engaged research
• Case Studies that examine study design and method in relation to specific research questions/public health issues
• Innovations in (local) dissemination of information related to the development of, implementation, or findings from research
• The engagement of community voices and perspective in human research protections/ethical review of research involving human beings.
• Community-engagement research methods and structuring practices that allow researchers and communities to reflect on and utilize different epistemological perspectives and ways of knowing
• Theories and models that explain links among contexts, partnership structures, practices, and outcomes
• Research and theorizing that places community-engaged research projects within the larger health system and society
• Conduct an ethnography of the research team before and during intervention, considering professional and personal cultures that are active, operational, and influential (e.g., reliance on empirical science assumptions informing project structure; emphasis on innovation and bias for the new at the potential expense of established and successful practice) in shaping both project and partnership dynamics.
• Explore social capital: What is it, how is it expended, and how should it be evaluated. How can a focus on engagement expand how we understand exchange as informing collective meanings (e.g., ongoing community political will to envision and intervene in the creation of alternative futures).
• Review of the literature that comparatively examines how disciplines define and/or conceptualize research concepts and terms related to engagement, participatory, collaboration, partnered, etc.

Keywords: community engaged research, participatory research, community involvement, research implementation

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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