Action-oriented research is defined as generating knowledge through applied collaborative university-community interventions that can simultaneously contribute to local communities and add to general knowledge. Few examples currently exist in the Christian integration literature. We present a conceptual article encouraging Christians who integrate their practice, research, and Christianity to undertake more of this difficult and costly, yet important research. Some benefits and difficulties in conducting action-oriented research are described with specific research examples. As a case study, we briefly report a failed initial effort, and then report a successful research example in the Center for Disease Control and Prevention-sponsored Multisite Violence Prevention Program (MVPP). We conclude that the imperfect case study can reveal lessons for researchers and community agencies that could make future action-oriented research of higher quality. We encourage researchers and practitioners to collaborate on action-oriented research to eventually lead to high quality research like the MVPP.
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