Action research and participatory evaluation

Five ways to improve your research or social change work

by Joanna Howard and Danny Burns

At IDS (Institute of Development Studies, Brighton, United Kingdom) we are passionate about our rich legacy of participatory methods, and we believe that Participatory Action Research (PAR) and evaluation are more important than ever in the current context of complex and polarising challenges.

Both participatory evaluation and PAR are methodologies that bring different perspectives into dialogue, help to identify systemic issues and generate actions to address them.

We have been running a short course in Participatory Action Research (PAR) for five years now, so it seems like a good moment to reflect on what we are learning about how this methodology can improve research and social change work, and its close links with participatory evaluation.

1. Challenging extractive processes of knowledge generation and valuing the knowledge of those who are ‘affected’ by issues and have ‘lived experience of them’

Often, approaches to generating ‘knowledge’ are open to engaging directly with the people most affected by an issue, but only as sources of primary data. Professional researchers, evaluators and practitioners then take this information and analyse it, and make decisions about what is important, and how to communicate it. This perpetuates knowledge hierarchies and denies people’s agency. Using both participatory evaluation as well as PAR in development research and practice engages people as researchers and evaluators of their own realities, and as active partners in identifying and enacting change.

2. Engaging with different ways of knowing

Participatory evaluation and PAR processes draw on a wide range of methods and tools to access different sources of knowledge and reflect on and analyse the data that is produced. Heron and Reason (2008) identified four ‘ways of knowing’ within an extended epistemology, that they suggest need to be brought into dialogue:

    • Experiential: what we know because we have lived it;
    • Presentational: rooted in experiential knowledge, we create this when we present this knowledge to others, especially through arts-based, creative, visual, and performative media;
    • Propositional: the knowledge created through collective ‘sense-making’, or theorising;
    • Practical: actionable knowledge to address the issue.

In PAR research design, we aim to sequence methods so that they engage with these different ways of knowing, taking care to include creative and non-textual methods which can help to access the emotional and embodied dimensions of people’s lived experience. Paying attention to these different ways of knowing will ground our research and evaluation practice in people’s realities, strengthen their ownership of both the evaluation and the research, and enhance the relevance of the findings.

3. Action oriented and iterative

We learn as much through action as we do from intellectual analysis and deliberation. Both participatory evaluation and PAR design are based in cycles of action and reflection. A group of co-evaluators or co-researchers conducting PAR together will reflect on data – either held by themselves, or that they have collected from other people and sources – reflect on and analyse this data and generate ideas (theory) about what it means, and what action to take.

The group then takes an action, collects data relating to this action, and reflects, analyses and theorises anew. For development research and practice, this process allows for theories to be tested, and adaptations to be made, in real time.

4. Collective analysis

The analytical component in participatory evaluation and PAR is crucial and is carried out through collective analysis processes. When more than one person is involved in analysis:

– more data can be analysed in real time because different groups can look at different parts of the data in parallel and then bring their learning together for a higher-level collective analysis; and

– meaning is discussed, debated and contested. This makes agreement on meaning stronger and surfaces differences in perspective. This leads to much greater ownership of the analysis, which in turn generates much stronger motivation for action.

5. A process which is rooted in a deep understanding of how change happens

At IDS, our participatory research work is informed by complexity and systems thinking and recognises that social change is complex and nonlinear. Flexibility and adaptation are key for social innovation – identifying change in complexity.

Cycles of action and reflection enable a group of co-researchers (and co-evaluators) to test out their ideas about pathways for change and adapt their course of action according to their learning.

We use ‘systemic’ action research (SAR), an extended methodology which can engage with multiple groups of stakeholders. SAR research design can build multiple strands of participatory inquiry, often in parallel, centring the inquiry with those who experience the issue in their daily lives, and setting up parallel streams of inquiry with other relevant actors such as duty bearers, NGOs, private sector, policymakers or funders.

We run our Participatory Action Research course once a year and for a week. Click here for more information, and to apply.

REFERENCE:

Heron J and Reason P (2008) Extending epistemology within a co-operative inquiry. In: Reason P and Bradbury H (eds) The SAGE Handbook of Action Research. Participative Inquiry and Practice. 2nd edition. London: Sage, pp.365–380

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