Thinking Outside the Researcher: The Imaginative Rewards of Participatory Analysis

Abstract

Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) is now commonplace in myriad disciplines from sociology to psychology to environmental science and health and medicine. In the context of my home discipline, public health, CBPR is a collaborative research approach where participants and researchers co-design projects and move them to action to improve health outcomes. CBPR occurs on a lengthy continuum from minor (e.g., community advisory boards) to major (e.g., community PIs) community engagement. Despite numerous and growing examples and varied ways of defining and discussing CBPR, many self-identified CBPR researchers agree that participatory analysis, where researchers and participants work together to evaluate data, is one of the most underdeveloped and least explored aspects of the research approach. Below I summarize the budding literature on participatory analysis, and then via case study, describe one lesser discussed reward of the co-analysis process – how participants can push the boundaries of research findings into new, unforeseen, and needed territories.

Analysis is a critical part of participatory research because it is where researchers and participants create and share knowledge together, a central goal of CBPR (Byrne et al., 2009; Gray, 2018; Israel et al., 2010; Key et al., 2019; Liebenberg et al., 2020; Rix et al., 2020, 2021; Vaughn et al., 2017; Wallerstein, 2021; Zhang et al., 2024). A growing number of researchers are starting to describe the ways they are adapting existing methods like theme (Liebenberg et al., 2020) or photographic analysis (Glaw et al., 2017), or models like DEPICT (Flicker & Nixon, 2015), to analyze data alongside participants (Switzer & Flicker, 2021). Through these and other examples, researchers highlight the importance of inclusive discussions and collaborative interpretations and decisions, which can produce findings that are more credible and useful to the community than traditional (e.g., researcher focused) analyses. To do this, researcher-participant teams are talking about data in accessible ways – through storytelling (Kipke et al., 2023; Lewis et al., 2019), workshops (Liebenberg et al., 2020), or art (Mannell et al., 2021); developing “user-friendly” language to understand scientific rigor versus defaulting to academic ways of writing; discussing and analyzing data (Liebenberg et al., 2020; Seale et al., 2015); and building in time for slower and deliberate collective reflection and analysis (Moldow et al., 2023).

Participatory analysis is admittedly complex, however. Due to the pressures of tenure and promotion, not all researchers have the privilege of time. Relatedly, CBPR researchers can experience pushback in their own disciplines or departments about the value of their work (Rix et al., 2020, 2021). Although their privilege might stand out among their community partners, they can lack the institutional power or position to assert their expertise and the worth of CBPR. This can make participatory analysis risky or difficult to balance amid other academic funding, publishing, and promotion priorities (Rix et al., 2020, 2021; Seale et al., 2015). As a result, some researchers may fail to engage in participatory approaches after they receive funding or their project begins (Jennings et al., 2018; Nind, 2011). Thus, even with funding, some researchers may feel pushed to stay the route rewarded by their institution (e.g., getting the grant, quickly disseminating papers), and may forgo more difficult collaborative analyses. These challenges notwithstanding, it is critical to continue to explore participatory analysis, how to do it, and how to experience and frame its benefits.

Participatory Analysis in the Transforming Academia for Equity (TAE) Project

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) funded our team as part of a larger TAE initiative to dismantle structural racism and other inequities embedded in academic policies and practices across seven diverse universities. The project was focused originally on supporting health equity research, and health equity researchers in the tenure and promotion process. As we began work on the project, however, it became clear that advancing equity in a university setting required more than engaging researchers. For example, we hired three graduate students to assist the project administratively, but they wanted to engage in the heart of the work and contribute ideas about how to improve the university experience for students more deeply. We pivoted; I trained the students to use photovoice – a participatory research method where participants use images to identify, express, and advocate for their needs (Wang, 1999). Together, we developed a photovoice project that invited students (N = 45) to share their experiences and challenges related broadly to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in their studies and lives at a large public Midwest university. Students inspired the idea for the project, led photovoice discussions and data collection, and helped analyze and interpret study data. The project took place over a year, beginning in 2022.

Our participatory analysis process included working with interested participants (a smaller sub-group of ten voluntary participants) to discuss, organize, review, and analyze the data through the lens of data storytelling. I led the process by suggesting steps and tasks and summarizing progress for the group at key intervals. For example, first we met as a group and brainstormed patterns in the data by discussing the story the data told about DEI at the university. Then I collated these topics and themes into a master list and sent them back out to the group. Next, we met to talk about and refine the list into a smaller number of salient codes. At this step we acknowledged the data was telling many stories, and we focused our conversations on the stories we wanted to disseminate about the data. We created a final list of salient codes based on this conversation. I sifted through the data with a sub-group of three interested voluntary participants to match text and images to codes and created a draft presentation of the results that told our student TAE story with textual and visual evidence. I sent this draft to the larger working group (ten participants) who reviewed the data to ensure this was how we wanted to tell the story of our data and project. From this discussion, we created a final data presentation.

Final themes included meanings and conceptions of DEI, problematic symbols (e.g., statues perceived to be racist, sexist) on campus, contradictions between university intentions and actions to address DEI, and the needs of specific vulnerable groups (graduate students, international students, students of color). The student group wanted to act based on the “problematic symbol” theme. This made sense given that the project took place not long after a campus controversy about keeping or tearing down a controversial historical statue. Students wanted their photos and captions to be used to continue the argument to remove the statue. As a photovoice researcher I had mixed feelings. On one hand, I was excited that the method was working to generate actionable ideas. On the other hand, I wanted to distance myself from the controversy, as campus leadership made it clear that the statue would not be moved and that this was a final decision. Staying engaged with students on this topic, however, did spark a new idea.

As the students shared their presentation at a few locations on campus, we continued to talk about the findings in new spaces and with new partners. Through these discussions, we realized that although we could not take down the specific statue in question, we could raise up, or make visible, alternate monuments and symbols of power on campus, especially those that celebrated women and people of color.

The Layered Project

We planned a new, follow-up project to the initial TAE photovoice project. In the fall of 2024 we began a yearlong project called Layered (still in process) to construct a memorial exhibit at the site of Read Hall – the first women’s dormitory on campus, which was photographed in the initial study as an important symbol of inclusion and women’s place in MU’s history. In 2022, university leaders tore down Read Hall as part of a campus-wide demolition to save money and maintenance resources. Student leaders protested the demolition, out of concern for meaning of the building (i.e., symbol for women) and to preserve history, but the building came down. The current (i.e., 2024-5) research team (seven students and three faculty researchers from different disciplines) is working across multiple mediums – photovoice, zines, projection art, and architecture – to design a memorial to celebrate campus spaces that students identify as safe and important.

Conclusions

There are many ways, reasons, and benefits of doing CBPR, including participatory analysis. Collaborating with students on this analysis drove the project in directions we did not imagine at its conception. Students had the energy and interest to keep talking about the campus statue and facilitate a path for new ideas based on what they could build and develop. They added a creative, fresh, and fearless component to a project and the analysis – and developed a way to sustain and extend the research to a new group of students. They created outputs that were hard to measure and value in an academic sense, but that were very meaningful in terms of community, memory, and place. The participatory evaluation served as a reminder that co-research and analysis can spark inspiring research ideas that will not transpire without participant researcher partnerships or an openness to participants’ ingenuity, resourcefulness, and capabilities.