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This chapter evaluates the usefulness of action research partnerships in investigating and addressing health inequalities. It describes some aspects of the experience in action research that sought to engage directly and wholeheartedly with communities and explains the different conception of action research. The chapter discusses the importance of balancing the relationship between action and research and provides a brief commentary on the organisation of action research, particularly the possibilities for division of labour across participants.

This chapter examines one particular way in which projects sought to engage communities in the action research process and discusses the role and experiences of community-based action researchers (CBARs). The analysis reveals that the Sustainable Health Action Research Programme (SHARP) projects which used the CBAR model found that it worked. The CBARs gave projects an entrée into communities and brought a very different perspective from that which would have been provided by traditional researchers. However, there are social risks and ethical issues in the CBAR model that need to be considered and properly addressed.

University and community partnerships are embedded in institutional contexts that create conflicting demands and require collaborative approaches that balance competing needs and interests and focus on accomplishing shared goals for community change. This chapter offers a case study of a partnership between a Nashville-based human service organization and a university-based research team that developed for the purpose of conducting a community needs assessment to fulfil the requirements for a Promise Neighborhoods Planning grant from the U.S. Department of Education. It explores how conflicting demands can potentially limit the authenticity of partnership relationships, and in turn, undermine the success of these types of collaboration. The chapter examines resulting challenges that arise in relation to three key tensions: defining expertise, institutional barriers, and expectations of scientific rigor. Approaches to overcoming these challenges are offered, and lessons learned are explored.

This chapter sets the scene for the whole book and maps the history of action research starting with Lewin's work as a psychologist in the 1940s, its take-up within education to its current position in healthcare. Because of its history, action research has numerous names and definitions — the majority of which are cited briefly in this chapter and then specifically addressed within individual chapters of the book. The philosophical perspective of action research is debated concluding its position within critical social theory. The importance of a cyclic process involving a change intervention and an important partnership between the researcher and practitioners is emphasised. Finally, the chapter looks at palliative care and the uptake of action research as a methodology within the specialty.

The HOD field school is an experiential learning program designed to promote the development of university students and community partners as they work together toward integrating research and action around social justice issues through community-based participatory methods. In this chapter, we describe the theoretical foundations and history of the HOD field school and the experiences of community partners and student participants, comparing experiences across settings and expanding on themes that have been observed consistently. Throughout our discussion we address the complexities of simultaneously meeting the personal and professional needs of students while working with communities in ways that align with the ideals of empowerment, reciprocity, intercultural respect, learning, participatory research, and sustainability. Finally, based on experience and theory we offer suggestions for educators who are interested in developing similar programs.

This chapter describes the roles of the professional teacher in the twenty-first century within the context of Confucian heritage cultures such as Hong Kong, including the importance of action research and reflective practice in teachers' continuing professional development.

This chapter describes the ways in which self-silencing theory can be used to understand the experiences of women in inner-city Boston living with HIV/AIDS. The author discusses how the self-silencing construct contributed to the creation of a gender-sensitive culturally relevant intervention related to safe sex behaviors for women at risk. The chapter presents a program of community-based participatory action research that involves (a) an examination of the complex problem of women living with HIV/AIDS in the United States, and (b) the use of the author's culturally relevant intervention to change behavior, increase self-esteem, decrease depression, and give ”voice” to women. The author argues that self-silencing theory can be applied in creating an innovative approach to HIV/AIDS prevention for women.

This chapter develops some arguments about quality and ethics in systematic action research. These arguments build on an emerging literature within the field of action research about what good research is within a participative paradigm. This chapter argues that the whole point of systematic action research is to get grips with the messy, complex, and difficult issues that have often defied resolution in the arenas of deprivation, conflict and poverty. To work in these areas entails risk and not to work in these parts is unethical. Procedural quality control and ethical regulation in practice often become a way of gate keeping and preventing real change. Under the rhetoric of protecting the individual one can fail to get grips with issues that are facing whole communities. In this chapter, it is argued that both quality and ethical practice come down to the relationship that external facilitators have with individuals and communities. This cannot be codified into standard procedure.

This chapter concludes this edited book by bringing together some key themes that have arisen through the accounts presented here in terms of the strength, weaknesses, and existing gaps in the field. The studies presented in this book are reviewed using a typology of change that considers the individual, the team/group, organisational, and the wider system level providing observations about the state of participatory research in palliative care and about challenges at specific levels. The challenges identified within these action research studies concern: issues of relationship, initiating and sustaining participation, processes of change, issues of power, ethical considerations, engaging with sensitive topics. Attention to reflexivity and responsiveness are described as ways to address these challenges.

Action research has always held the promise of an embedded learning process that can both inform and create change. This approach has been developed and refined over the years so that it can comprehensively answer challenges about its robustness, rigour and quality, but this chapter argues that action research has also been limited by scale, by linear model of change and by an over-reliance on consensual and dialogic processes. This chapter does not trace the history of action research; rather this chapter intends to explain what action research is. It also explores how action research needs to be developed to realise its potential as a catalyst for social transformations. It also maps some of the arguments for the shifting beyond either an ‘individual’ or ‘small group’ focus.

The aim of this chapter is to illustrate in which real action research projects can emerge and evolve across a wide social and organisational terrain. Due to the depth and breadth of each of the projects, this chapter focuses mostly on the designs of the examples. In this chapter, the focus is on the two forms of systematic action research: the large system action research, which characterises a number of SOLAR projects; and the networked systematic inquiry, which describes the shape of many PhDs that the author and his colleague supervised.

This chapter explores at the complexities of action research from the perspective of action research facilitators and those overseeing and managing action research projects. It examines the following important issues; 1) the key roles for systematic action research facilitators; 2) the relationship of systemic action research facilitators to the research; 3) recording inquiry group sessions; and 4) support for action research facilitators. It is argued in this chapter, that action research facilitators should recognise themselves as active participants in that process. They should take a position as co-learners in the process and they need to be present both in role and as a person. Good facilitation of action research depends on mobilising passion and building trust. It should encourage emergence rather that push for solutions, and it should require the action research facilitators to make strategic challenges.

Ensuring high quality research is undertaken is an important issue that requires addressing whatever the study design. The concepts associated with quality (reliability, validity, rigour) are shaped by the paradigmatic origins of the research being undertaken. This chapter considers the quality of the action research, why it is important to address this issue, and offers some approaches that can be used to enable judgments about the quality of the action research drawing on different frameworks (principle based, practical, typologies of level). An action research study undertaken to develop and pilot a peer education programme on end of life issues for older people illustrates how researchers can demonstrate the quality of their work.

This chapter deals with acting — the role of social science in action research. It argues that in addition to research projects which are explicitly identified as ‘action research’ much of the process of policy formation and implementation has a strong research component. It establishes a methodological basis for action research in contrast with notions of ‘pure social science’; explores the relationship between action research and the notion of praxis in social research; illustrates with examples drawn from community development, development projects in the global south, health projects and education projects; considers the role of action research in participatory governance. It draws on examples of action research in practice including the UK CDPs of the 1970s.

This chapter explores action research involving people with intellectual disabilities (ID). It will describe the author's journey of discovery from conducting research on people with ID to working alongside with people with ID as part of the emancipator element of the participatory action research (PAR) approach. The chapter introduces a number of PAR studies that were developed from practice, embedded in practice and produced a product (a manual, booklet, electronic tool) that would ultimately feed back into practice. Such collaborative efforts, which systematically build clinician feedback into their development and dissemination will make the resources more effective, flexible, more dynamic and more likely to be used. Research provided in this chapter demonstrates well that PAR was an excellent tool to engage with people with ID as well as a range of clinicians, academics, volunteers, and parents, promoting empowerment and acting as the catalyst for the sharing of personal experiences.

This chapter reports on the purpose, methods, and findings of a CDC-funded project in Hartford, Connecticut, entitled the Community Responses to Risks of Emergent Drug Use Project. This project was designed to (1) use ethnographic and epidemiological data collection to identify and track emergent drug use trends; (2) analyze these patterns in terms of the sociodemographic traits of participants; (3) assess the potential impact of identified changes on local public health; and (4) use a Participatory Action Research (PAR) model to implement community-based public health responses to research findings in collaboration with a community advisory group. Three illicit drug use trends examined in the project—the spread of methamphetamine among hard-core drug users, the adoption of PCP among emergent adult users, and the use of sweetened cigars among youth—are assessed while describing applied initiatives designed to address the public health implications of identified drug use trends.

This chapter reports on a critical action research study that focused on the development of relationships between aged care staff and family members of people with dementia, in the context of a palliative approach to care. The chapter begins with a discussion of some of the theoretical perspectives underpinning critical action research, post-structural understandings of power and how power relations can present challenges to the conduct of action research. Drawing on our study data we explore how aged care staff unwittingly exercise power to support organizational interests that undermine the establishment the of collaborative relationships with family members. We also discuss, how power relations may be negotiated in the action research action process to open a ‘communicative space’ so that aged care staffcan arrive at a critique of their situation and reconfigure how they exercise power to produce more equitable and productive relationships with family members.