Community Psychology: Chapter Seven

Question 1

What is participatory action research (PAR)?

Answer 1

Par is often used because of its democratic nature of involving community members or stakeholders as part of the research process. it is effective in promoting active community participation, health and empowerment while also aiming to prevent problems in communities, groups and individuals. it is a way to listen to the voices of the people concerned and to empower them to attend to their own issues.

Question 2

What is the main aim of Action research (AR)?

Answer 2

the main aim in engaging in this form of research is to enable them to gather evidence about their current practices in order to change and improve the processes and the outcomes. it is an important way to motivate people to work together to bring change.

Question 3

What is the fundamental purposes of AR?

Answer 3

• collect sound research data from practice in a variety of ways
• inform reflections and decision-making processes and subsequently
• make the findings known

Question 4

What is a benefit or AR?

Answer 4

the community or organisation is part of the design of the project, therefore they are much more likely to benefit from the research process than in any other research, where the benefits for the participants are more limited.

Question 5

Kemmis and McTaggart developed a more progressive way of thinking through practices and summarised their approach as what?

Answer 5

AR aims to build communities of people committed to enlightening themselves about the relationship between circumstance, action and the consequence of their own situation and emancipating themselves from the institutional and personal constraints which limit their power to live their own legitimate values.

Question 6

Montero continues stating that the word “participation: has three meaning when used in CP, name them.

Answer 6

1. it cannot be performed individually because that destroys the community aspect.
2. it is responsive to community-identified needs and expectations
3. the degree of participation will denote the success of any engagement

Question 7

Montero represents the fluctuations of engagement and commitment as centripetal and centrifugal forces. Name the 7 fluctuations.

Answer 7

1. nucleus of maximum participation and commitment
2. frequent participation, High commitment
3. specific participation, medium commitment
4. sporadic participation, low commitment
5. new and tentative participation, low commitment (donor)
6. Tangential participation
7. Positive, friendly curiosity, no commitment

Question 8

Arnstein developed her ladder of collaboration, name the steps of her model.

Answer 8

1 is the bottom of the steps:

1. manipulation
2. therapy
3. informing
4. consultation
5. partnership
6. Delegated power
7. citizen control

Question 9

Wilcox proposed five stages that correspond to the steps in order to promote effective participation through collaboration, list them.

Answer 9

1. information - telling people
2. consulting - offer options and hear feedback
3. deciding together
4. acting together
5. supporting autonomous community initiatives.

Question 10

Name the two different forms of participation in AR.

Answer 10

a) relatively passive
where participants are the source of information for someone else’s project

b) to fully participative
including decisions on the research focus and methods, data collection, analysis and dissemination)

Question 11

Define collaborative action research (CAR).

Answer 11

assisted the facilitator to plan and then to work in ways that were responsive to the participant’s expressed needs, informed by their exactions to the material they were learning.

Question 12

Define professional learning community (PCL)

Answer 12

a team of people in an organisational or school setting for collaborative research

Question 13

Sagor describes five habits of inquiry necessary for successful meaningful and collaborative AR, name them.

Answer 13

1. clarifying a shared vision of success
2. articulating theories informing actions
3. team action planning
4. purposeful collection of data
5. collaborative analysis of data

Cats Actively Train, Plan & Collab

Question 14

Sagor suggests three sub-questions to develop collaboration. What are they?

Answer 14

1. what specifically did I/we do? (Actions)
2. What improvement occurred for my/our students/ (changes)
3. what was the relationship between my/our actions and changes in performance?

Question 15

Mcintyre identifies three key aspects of PAR, name them.

Answer 15

1. alliances are built through planning and conducting the research together
2. knowledge is co-constructed by participants (including the researchers)
3. self- & critical awareness are promoted in order to initiate change and lead to activism

Question 16

What are the five Factors to which a critical perspective has been developed?

Answer 16

• the status quo
• challenging the oppression of others
• social injustices
• undemocratic processes
• the political, social, economic and ecological systems that inform such practices

Question 17

Define emancipatory character

Answer 17

through it, people gain a greater sense of their won agency, taking action to acquire resources and to negotiate assertively for the rights.

Question 18

What are the differnet variations of AR?

Answer 18

1. the degree of involvement of the participants (their agency to influence the processes and the degree to which they contribute to the research processes)
2. the best methods for collecting data and the types of data to be collected
3. the ways in which the data are analysed and reported.

Question 19

what common features do AR approaches share?

Answer 19

• it is cyclic
• it is oriented towards real-life problems
• it focuses on change and improvement
• it is empowering for individuals who participate and work towards changing a social situation

Question 20

What are the key benefits of AR in community psychology?

Answer 20

1. the main goal of AR is that participants will discover new ways of thinking, acting and relating to one another positively to enable collaboration and influence.
2. participating should strengthen “community” as value and a way of being, emphasising companionship, acceptance, tolerance & celebrating diversity & the potential of each
3. focuses on change

Question 21

What are the four commonly cited steps of AR

Answer 21

1. plan/question
2. act
3. observe/evaluation
4. reflect/decide

Question 22

What are the challenges when doing (P)AR?

Answer 22

1. the first concern = obtaining ethical approvals for research, where the processes are planned to unfold and cannot necessarily be predicted beforehand
2. Then there are important questions to ask such as “which aspects should we work with?” and “how is evidence best collected and evaluated”?

Question 23

Kolb’s experiential learning cycle, which moves in a cyclical how?

Answer 23

from concrete experience to reflective observation to abstract conceptualisation the finally to active experiment

Question 24

What is summary on a page (SOAP)?

Answer 24

this idea came from a consultation process with an organisation, where the SoaP was a way of summarising meetings in which the main decision points were highlighted.

Question 25

Steps of SoaP

Answer 25

1. Planning (topic, expand and actions for session)
2. actions (reflect on last session, discuss questions and explore services provided)
3. observing and evaluating (discuss what happened)
4. reflection (End result)