Adventures in Action Research: Reflections and Lessons Learned

Abstract

In this paper, we outline our recent adventures in Action Research in which we developed a publicly available toolkit to help older adults and their caregivers navigate the health and home care systems in our province in Canada. We outline the trajectory that brought us to Action Research and describe the project we undertook to provide practical support for older adults and their caregivers in our community. We reflect on the process of research, including our work with policy makers and key stakeholders in our efforts to make change. In the hope it might provide guidance to those beginning their own work in research for change, we reflect on lessons learned, including the personal and professional challenges and successes we encountered in our ongoing commitment to this work.

In this paper, I (ML) explore my recent foray into Action Research along with two central collaborators without whom this project would not have been realized (JDL and AE). Action Research can be broadly defined as research conducted with the aim of creating change. “It seeks not only to identify and understand health and social disadvantage but also to mobilise local action to challenge those disadvantages” (Murray & Wright-Bevans, 2017, p. 132). My foray into this territory was not planned at the outset but unfolded in (often stumbling) steps over a period of many years. I retrace those steps here in the hopes that their articulation might be helpful to others starting out in their own adventures in harnessing research for change. In what follows, I describe how I came to this project, the outcome, and what our research process entailed. I will then focus on challenges faced as well as elements of our process that contributed to its success. Throughout, I offer candid reflections on my personal and professional experiences of engaging with this work, which has been some of the most challenging and rewarding of my career.

My adventure began in 2016 with a new project in the ‘aging space’ – a territory that has attracted significant attention from scholars and policy makers alike given our aging population and strained health care system in Canada (Armstrong & Braedley, 2023; Canadian Healthcare Association, 2009; Islam & Gilmour, 2024; Keefe, 2011). While much media and scholarly attention is directed to the experiences of older adults in Long Term Care (e.g., nursing homes), they represent only a fraction of the older population. Only 2.5% of those aged 65 to 79 lived in these institutions, rising to 11.0% among those aged 80 or older (Statistics Canada, 2022). Thus, the vast majority of older adults live in community, and many require the supports of spouses, adult children, family members or friends to continue to live in a safe and healthy way at home. These (unpaid) informal caregivers perform a range of support tasks including transportation, meal preparation, housework, house maintenance and yard work, scheduling and coordinating appointments, managing finances, administering medical treatment, and providing personal care, including bathing, dressing, and toileting (Lee, 1999; Sinha, 2013). While often invisible in the health care system, informal caregivers provide most of the care work performed and the country’s health system could not operate without them (Gilmour & Rotermann, 2025; Qureshi et al., 2025). Indeed, they have been described as the “backbone of the health and long-term care system in Canada” (Canadian Healthcare Association, 2009, p. 63). At the same time, informal caregivers often face significant challenges in occupying this important role, including feelings of overload, isolation and stress, high rates of clinically significant anxiety and depression, financial strain and frailty, and poor physical health (Gutiérrez-Sánchez et al., 2023; Koomson et al., 2024; NIA, 2020; Sinha, 2013; Turcotte, 2013).

As a feminist psychologist interested in women’s health, the link between care work and distress has been a long-standing interest of mine (Lafrance, 2007, 2009). In this research, I was interested to explore caregivers’ experiences of performing this important but often stressful work. I wanted to hear about their challenges as well as how they succeeded in managing their role. I also had a particular interest in exploring the role of ‘place and space’ in care work. I proposed to conduct a photo elicitation study in which participants would engage in a series of interviews about the role of the home in ‘home care’, prompted by photos they would take about their everyday experiences of providing care. However, once I began the first set of interviews, it quickly became apparent that this was not a topic of concern for them. While it is common for participants to be unsure about how to respond to interview questions about the taken-for-granted aspects of their everyday lives (Devault, 1990), my questions about place did not seem to resonate and failed to get traction in the interviews. While I still believe in the scholarly relevance of this question, I conceded that my question was not relevant to caregivers themselves, and I decided to abandon that thread of inquiry. Instead, I paid careful attention to what was most significant to them, which quickly became apparent. Caregivers’ accounts were dominated by their struggles to figure out how to get the help and supports they needed to ensure the health and safety of those for whom they provided care and this spurred my interest in taking action to address participants’ concerns.

The Final Product and How It Grew

To situate this exploration, I will skip to the end of our team’s process and then circle back to describe how we got there. The final product, “Aging in New Brunswick: A user’s guide” (hereafter referred to as “the Guide”) is a toolkit for the general public, designed to help older adults and their caregivers navigate the complex landscape of information, services, forms and resources in our province in Canada. Presented in booklet form, it outlines important information in simple and accessible language and a reader-friendly format. Consistent with provincial literacy rates, we aimed for a grade four reading level, and it was produced in both official languages, English (121 pages) and French (128 pages). Key chapters include home care services, legal matters (e.g., Power of Attorney), financial matters (e.g., how to continue to pay bills if you become cognitively unable to do so), health and medical care, accessibility devices (e.g., walkers, wheelchairs, grab bars, raised toilet seats), living with dementia, driving safety, long term care, and end of life issues. Intended as a practical guide, it provides clear guidance on how to secure needed supports in our community. For instance, it provides step-by-step direction on how to get a wheelchair or walker, including the advice to begin by getting a prescription from your doctor so that the purchase can be claimed on income tax, how to find an occupational therapist who can help with equipment selection (including phone numbers and websites for central agencies), where devices can be rented or purchased, and how to get one if you can’t afford to rent or buy. It also includes practical tips like trying to make purchases on “Senior Days” when pharmacies offer discounts to older adults. The Guide was launched in 2022 as a simple website with downloadable and printer-friendly PDF documents (whole document and individual chapters). Print copies were also housed in all public libraries in the province.

We were delighted with the positive and enthusiastic reception with which the Guide was received. For instance, I was surprised to learn that most of the library’s 100 copies were already out on loan before we had managed to advertise. Our university sent notice of the Guide to various media outlets, and we were quickly met with a flurry of media attention from across the province. This public attention helped with promotion and generated a series of requests from community groups to give presentations about the Guide, further spreading the word. Years later, I am still routinely invited to give these presentations, and it is always a great pleasure to engage with the community in this way.

At the time of the launch, we could not have anticipated that we would soon be approached by the provincial government who requested to formally adopt the Guide. This invitation included their offer to partner with our team to continue to update the documents as changes to policy and practice were made. Moreover, they offered to fund the printing and distribution of the Guide to the public (via the province’s “2-1-1” telephone system for navigating community, government, and social services; https://nb.211.ca). Their deep investment in our project has enabled the Guide to grow, stay current, and reach the people who need it. Several years later, we are now in the 5^th edition and thousands of copies have been distributed across the province. The Guide has been used as the ‘textbook’ in an ongoing series of public workshops on aging and it is routinely used by service providers (e.g., social workers, doctors, nurses, hospital staff), who, we have been told, often refer to it as ‘the bible’ of the local aging space. In 2024, I was selected as one of 8 researchers from the province to showcase our work on Parliament Hill in the nation’s capital (Research NB, 2025). There, I met with Members of Parliament and Senators of the Government of Canada to discuss the Guide and the critical need to better support older adults and their caregivers. The event was well attended by Provincial Members of the Legislative Assembly who took copies of the Guide back to their constituents. Such national and provincial attention has helped to keep this project alive and thriving.

We write of the success of this project with surprise and delight because we did not anticipate this level of impact at the outset. The project was developed with a ‘build it and (hope) they will come’ kind of aspiration. We had a clear vision for the Guide and knew an intervention like this was urgently needed. However, with limited funds, we were concerned about how to get it into the hands of New Brunswickers. It is my firm conviction that this project was successful because it was born out of the expressed needs of caregivers and older adults themselves. Our privileged roles as Qualitative researchers allowed us the space and time to listen carefully to their needs and experiences, and to develop interventions guided by their concerns. This experience speaks to the unique power of Qualitative research to generate potent and positive change (Murray & Wright-Bevans, 2017).

Our Process

Step 1: Listening to Older Adults and Caregivers

This project grew out of two independent programs of research, both conducted in New Brunswick, a bilingual and semi-rural province on the east coast of Canada. The first was my research involving semi-structured interviews with 44 informal caregivers of older adults (Lafrance et al., 2022, 2023). Participants ranged in age from thirty to eighty-nine and most were women (37). Reflecting the demographics of the province, participants identified English (27) or French (17) as their preferred language, and they were interviewed in their language of choice. Participants were evenly distributed between living in urban (23) and rural (21) locations. Most described being a primary caregiver for one individual (28), with the remaining caring for two (11) or more (5) individuals. Participants identified caring for individuals with a variety of health conditions including dementia (19), cancer (12), cardiac disease (8), macular degeneration or blindness (6), post-operative complications (6), mental illness (5), stroke (4), Parkinson’s (2), renal failure (2), and muscular dystrophy (1). In addition, many care recipients were reported to have multiple health conditions (e.g., cancer and dementia) that also overlapped with a host of additional conditions such as diabetes, arthritis, physical immobility, pneumonia, vertigo, incontinence, difficulties with eating, and frailty.

The second study was conducted by second author, Durkee-Lloyd (2018). She conducted semi-structured interviews with 33 English speaking adults over the age of 65 to explore how they access government services and information in the province. Participants ranged in age from 65-100, with most (70%) being under the age of 74. Most were women (24) and nine were men.

Both studies recruited participants via advertisements in flyers, community newsletters, and social media (Facebook post) and interviews were conducted in participants’ homes, the researcher’s office, or a quiet location in the community (e.g., meeting rooms in public libraries). Recordings of the interviews were transcribed verbatim and interview recordings and transcripts were subsequently analyzed in the language in which they were spoken. Both Durkee-Lloyd and I employed a thematic approach to analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2013, 2022) to explore the central concerns faced by older adults and caregivers. Through our mutual interest in each other’s work, we discovered that both of our analyses revolved around participants’ struggles with information and system navigation. For example, the following are extracts from interviews with caregivers that capture the sense of helplessness and disorientation they expressed in trying to find supports:

Where are you going to find out? You’re the daughter and you have to put your mom in a home. It’s gotten to that point she can’t live alone anymore […] Like, what do I do? Where do I start? Who do I talk to? (Diane) ¹

I want to find out about foot care. Do I go to Social Development? Do I go to Public Health? Do I go to her health insurance? Do I go to homeworkers or to a private agency? By the time you make those five phone calls you might have an answer […]. It’s all scattered. There’s no cohesiveness at all. (Margaret)

The same sense of confusion was expressed across interviews with older adults. For instance, Francis noted, “There are so many things you want to find out. How are we supposed to find out?”. In a similar vein, Anna said, “I’m not aware of too much that is out there and how would you get it”, and Dorothy said, “Like I wouldn’t know if I had a problem, I wouldn’t know where to go to call”.

Across both sets of interviews, participants expressed the hopelessness of not even knowing where to begin and what questions to ask to get help. For instance, Penny stated “if you’re not sure of what you’re looking for [and] if you don’t ask the right thing, you won’t get any kind of an answer”. Similarly, Helen explained:

I guess we didn’t know the questions to ask. That’s what happens, you don’t know what to ask. Once you get through to the right person it is okay. But sometimes you take a roundabout way to get there and it is because you don’t know the right questions to ask or who to ask them.

The delay in securing needed supports was not only inconvenient but often described as culminating in crisis. For example, Chris described his frantic attempts to get help for his mother who displayed symptoms of what he later understood as dementia and psychosis (a common result of urinary tract infections in older populations). He had no background or experience with either and was in an ongoing state of crisis for months before he finally got some direction. Without a family doctor or any guidance, he was forced to take her repeatedly to the emergency room and described his ongoing frustration with the lack of direction he received:

I didn’t know I needed a gerontologist, I didn’t know, I didn’t even know what they do. You know what I mean? Like I had no idea […] But whenever you go into the emergency and you go in so many times looking for help and nobody is giving you direction coming out, you know and you’re expecting them to do something for you and they’re not, then all of a sudden it’s just like you don’t know where to start right? And then you’re almost in there crying. (Chris)

Step 2. Identifying Needed Information: What Participants Said They Needed to Know and How They Wanted That Information Presented

It was in listening to people’s struggles that spurred our resolve to do something to help. I distinctly recall being inspired by my interview with Carolyn, a caregiver who lamented the effort it took to find information she needed by saying, “There should be a way to compile all this information in one spot and make it accessible”. We began to wonder how we could harness our research skills, time, funding, connections, and energies to help build some sort of resource to help people navigate the health and home care systems. Motivated by our shared conviction of the urgent need to support older adults and their caregivers in our province, Dr. Durkee-Lloyd and I gathered an interdisciplinary team (gerontology, psychology, social work, nursing, sociology) and applied for funding to develop an ‘information hub’ (Lafrance et al., 2019). Once funding was secured, we started by returning to our respective interviews to conduct a fine-grained analysis of exactly what kinds of information participants wanted and how they wanted to have that information presented.

We conducted a careful and systematic analysis of what points of information were most crucial, and these themes became the table of contents for the Guide (e.g., home care services, legal issues, financial matters, medical issues, accessibility devices, dementia driving safety, long term care, and end of life issues). For instance, Angela spoke to the need for information on health supports like elevated toilet seats and ‘blister packs’ in which her mother’s medications could be bundled in a way that would enable her to know if they had been taken. She said, “For example blister packs. I didn’t know what a blister pack was […] special toilet seat for mom. How would I know this? Like nobody ever gave us any of that know-how.”

Many participants talked about their confusion with long term care, and this became a central chapter in the Guide. In New Brunswick, long-term care is fragmented into special care homes (Level 2) for those needing low to moderate degrees of care, and nursing homes (Level 3A) for those requiring full-time nursing care. These are further subdivided into general care (Level 3G), memory care (Level 3B), and care for those with more complex needs (Level 4). These are privately owned and operated but inspected and licensed by the government. Not surprisingly, many struggled to understand the system. David, an older man who cared for his wife with dementia at home said, “The home care system is just a great mystery”. Chris wanted to find out the cost of long-term care for his mother and discovered tremendous variations that baffled him. He said, “You go to four homes you almost get like four different answers […] and then you’re lost”.

Similarly, Brenda described how challenging it was to get her mother placed in a long-term care home. When asked if she had tried to find information about nursing homes, she said:

Oh yes, absolutely, with difficulty. There is no centralized place for them [long-term care facilities]. So, it took lots of time, and I am a detailed person by nature. If I had a hard time and had difficulty getting it, I cannot imagine a person without an education, a computer or patience would never get it. You would just give up.

Like Brenda, many participants commented on the level of education, literacy, computer access, and personal connections in the community required to navigate the system and these accounts inspired us to democratise this information in a way that could reach the ‘average New Brunswicker.’ Brenda continued by outlining the lengths she went to find the answers she needed:

I started by calling a Seniors’ Home. I went to the list of Seniors’ Homes and just started calling them. I was nice to them so that that would talk to me. “How do I go about this? Who do I call?” They would give me the name of someone, and I would call them and then they would say to me, “Oh have you heard of this one?” and I would call them. Eventually I compiled a folder full and then I rewrote it all. It was like doing an exam.

The negative health implications of carework is well documented and caregivers made clear that the extensive work required to navigate the system only intensified this strain. Stephanie likened navigating the system to being a “second job” on top of her paid employment as well as her care work for her mother. The aim of our project was to help ease the burden of system navigation in our efforts to support older adults and caregivers in our province.

When asked how they wanted information presented, participants had clear preferences. First, they described wanting it to be process oriented. As Jennifer said, “Navigating the whole process […] this is where we are. What’s my next step?”. Many caregivers reported being in an almost constant state of crisis, and could only handle the information needed to get through the challenge of the day. In response to this need, we built the Guide to follow common trajectories as health concerns develop. For instance, there are step by step instructions on how to get help in the home, either privately, or through government subsidy. Similarly, there are different sets of guidance on driving safety in the early stages of dementia than later.

Second, participants expressed a clear preference that the information be presented in print format. This data comes from the interviews with older adults who were explicitly asked about their preferences for information delivery. For example, Helen noted “I still like the paper copy”, and Suzanne said, “I think I would rather it in print”. Doris and Robert, who were a married couple, were interviewed together. When asked about their choice, Robert explained, “print, then that way you’ve got a copy”, while Doris echoed, “I like things on paper”. This theme continued quite consistently across those who preferred a physical copy, with Brenda explaining “I would prefer something I could hold in my hand, hard copy”.

Step 3: Consultation With Key Stakeholders and Service Providers

Armed with clear directions on the content and format of the information participants wanted, our team’s task turned to collecting answers to their questions. This meant that we dove into the process of system navigation ourselves, which proved to be no easy feat. We met with over 30 key stakeholders and service providers from across the province to ensure that we represented the information accurately. We met with representatives from provincial agencies and departments, not-for-profit agencies, and for-profit services. We talked with nurses, social workers, doctors, accountants, lawyers, police officers (regarding driving safety and dementia), and funeral directors. Each brought their own pieces of the complex puzzle, enabling a broad view of the landscape and the details of its navigation.

Step 4: Public Consultations on Drafts

Once we had compiled drafts of the individual chapters, we then recruited 45 members of the public (mostly older adults and caregivers) to ‘pilot test’ subsets of the chapters. We asked for their feedback on clarity, what other questions they might have about the information, and their suggestions for improvement. The documents were written in English and then translated to French, and we invited feedback on the French documents to ensure that the translations were appropriate for New Brunswick Francophones. Participants provided their feedback via interviews, and/or written comments sent via email.

The result of this 4-step process is a bilingual pair of documents that are centred around the identified needs of older adults and their caregivers. They are housed on a simple website but were built for print, which fundamentally shaped its structure. Thanks to the provincial government’s support, print copies are available to members of the public for free by calling a toll-free number (2-1-1). Years in the making, this resource has been remarkably successful, and we are proud to report that it has been widely used across the province. However, this was not a direct or simple process and in the last section of this paper, we offer reflections on the challenges and aspects of our process that contributed to its success.

Reflections and Lessons Learned: Challenges

Investment in Time and Energy

I could not have anticipated what an investment this project would become when I first entered this space 10 years ago. The recursive and ongoing process of identifying and representing local resources (which are in constant state of flux) often seemed to be a fool’s errand. To keep the Guide alive, it needs to be updated on a regular basis and revised as programs come and go and this requires ongoing commitment.

Easily worth the time and energy required to write and publish two scholarly books or a series of refereed articles, this project might be regarded as ‘poor return on investment’ in terms of securing funding, tenure and/or promotion. As a senior scholar free from the pressures of tenure and promotion requirements, I had the privilege of being able to invest in this intensive way. Although universities and granting agencies have given increasing attention to the value of knowledge mobilization and community engagement, traditional metrics would not capture the value of this work. Quite simply, I would not have been promoted based on this work. Therefore, career advancement is a serious consideration in taking on this kind of project for those without the luxury of tenure and promotion.

Bring a Critical Outsider

A second challenge stemmed from our positions as academics (in the “Ivory Tower”) attempting to insert ourselves into the domain of the Public Sector. Our work in “Step 3” in consulting with key stakeholders to clarify details of the system was sometimes uncomfortable and information was not always forthcoming. I attended several meetings with government representatives who sat, arms folded, while listening to my assertions that people struggled to navigate the (their) system. Many appeared to regard what we were doing as infringement on their territory and a critique of their service offerings. Thus, our positions as critical outsiders made this work difficult navigate, particularly in the building stage.

Managing Uncertainty and Risk

A third challenge was managing the uncertainty about what we were working toward. We had absolute certainty that the resource we were building was needed, but with limited financial resources, many uncertainties remained. How could we get the Guide into people’s hands? How would we keep it current? How could we ensure that this intervention did not merely ‘tick the boxes’ of our grant promises but had a tangible impact in the community? I feared that the Guide would be obsolete as soon as it was printed and that we would only manage a limited circulation. It often felt like a Sisyphean task and doubt loomed large throughout the process.

What helped move through these (sometimes daily) moments of doubt was holding onto outcome-independent goals – the value of employing and training students. In particular, I focussed on the value of supporting our extraordinary Project Manager, Ashley Erb, who began this role as a senior undergraduate student. Years later, she is now working directly with older adults and caregivers to navigate the very system our Guide outlines. She manages a provincially funded program aimed at helping older adults “age in place” at home by helping them access the myriad of resources available in the province. Our Guide is a key tool in her arsenal, and she distributes it widely in her work. We also employed several students as Research Assistants, many of whom continue to work in the aging space or in social services. Thus, trusting in the value of the training and experience students were gaining helped to buoy resolve on days that it flagged and served as an important end in itself.

When Private and Professional Lives Collide: Becoming a Caregiver While Doing This Work

My professional interest in caregivers of older adults became a personal reality very abruptly when my father developed vascular dementia and rapidly declining health. Being consumed with his care while managing this project coincided with the outbreak of the COVID pandemic, in which the challenges of senior care took centre stage in Canada and around the world (Armstrong, Armstrong, & Bourgeault, 2020, Armstrong, Armstrong, Choiniere, et al., 2020; Estabrooks et al., 2023). On the one hand, my personal experience directly informed the creation of the Guide, and I was able to include a range of information that I would otherwise not have known about. I often used private meetings with health care and service providers as an opportunity to probe for information and discovered invaluable insights that were included in the Guide. On the other hand, this also meant that caregiving for older adults consumed both my professional and personal lives and it all became very heavy to hold. Although there are more findings from the caregiving study that could form the basis of a series of academic articles, I have decided to step away from this data and pursue other programs of research that are a better fit for my emotional and energetic resources.

An important consideration that is rarely acknowledged in academic circles is the emotional and psychological effects of our research. This is a particular consideration for Qualitative researchers who spend hours in deep conversation with people about their lives and then pour over the recordings and transcripts, often for years. This does not amount to merely collecting or analyzing “data”; People’s stories become part of our consciousness, our memories, our lives. I have been profoundly changed by the stories that people have shared with me through research and it has been a great privilege to learn and grow from their generous offerings. An important part of ethical and reflexive research practice for Qualitative researchers is attending to what stories we are equipped to hear, how we hold those stories, how we carry them, and when we need to put them down (Karcher et al., 2024). I routinely advise students to consider their research topics carefully, not only in terms of the scholarly relevance, but the implications of living with these stories for their own health and wellbeing. As Qualitative researchers, we are our instruments – in inviting and listening to accounts, and in co-constructing meaning. It is essential that we care for ourselves as well as others in our process of meaning making.

Reflections and Lessons Learned: Contributions to Success

Connecting With Community

An essential ingredient to our success was connecting with community. Older adults and caregivers told us what information they struggled to unearth and how they wanted that information delivered. As such, they directed our process and product. Once the Guide was complete, our ongoing engagement with community has shaped its evolution. We are routinely invited to give community presentations about the Guide to a variety of groups (e.g., Rotary Clubs, groups for retired professionals, senior’s groups, women’s groups etc.). As a result, we have spent a great deal of time in church halls and community centres giving talks to groups from 10 to 300. In turn, they have been tremendously supportive of our efforts, spreading the word and keeping us abreast of developments across the province.

Harnessing Existing Resources

Working with a modest budget and tight time constraints required us to think creatively about how to reach the public by harnessing resources that already existed in our community. Our initial dissemination plan involved: 1) building a simple website to house the documents and 2) printing a set of hard copies and housing them in our provincial library system. Both strategies drew on rich pools of support and resources.

First, AE suggested that we approach the communications department of our university to see if they would build and sustain our website as part of the university’s online presence. This had never occurred to me as an option and turned out to be a pivotal part of our success. Our university has been a champion of this project, partnering with us free of charge. Their support meant funds were freed up to invest in building the document, and that we are confident in our ability to maintain the website over time. We are deeply grateful for our institution’s support and know that not all are as fortunate to have this.

Second, we were thrilled to collaborate with our provincial library system. This not only meant that hard copies were on library shelves around the province, but also that they were available through the “Books by Mail” service. This service is available to anyone in the province with a library card and enables citizens to call their local library to request any book in the system. Requested books are mailed and returned free of charge in a sturdy self-addressed fabric envelope. This invaluable service in our province allows people who live in rural and remote areas, and those with mobility challenges to access all the library’s holdings, including our Guide. Key to our success was knowing about such community resources and creating partnerships.

Being a Critical Outsider

Earlier, we described being a critical outsider as a challenge in this process. However, we want to also highlight this as a key strength. In fact, we argue that this project was successful because it was developed by critical outsiders. A central problem with the landscape of resources and information in our province (and beyond) is that it is comprised of a whole host of government services, nonprofit agencies, and for-profit services, each with their own mandates and agendas. A resource like this could not have come from the ‘inside’.

In contrast to being governed by institutional mandates, our agenda was to listen and respond to the voices of older adults and caregivers. It was their voices that directed our work. From this vantage point as Qualitative researchers, we could see beyond the silos. We could see the need to build a map to help orient people across the disjointed landscape. It was our grounding in the interviews that made all the difference. As leaders in Participatory Action Research have made clear (Fine & Torre, 2021; Lykes, in press) Qualitative researchers are uniquely positioned to understand people’s experiences and to take action for change. We hope that the rapidly increasing attention to Qualitative research also brings increasing attention to Qualitative research as a cite for making meaningful change in community.

Conclusion

This first step into Action Research has ignited our activist imaginations and inspired us to think in more complex ways about the intersections between research and social change. Those new to the field are directed to the wealth of scholarship in this space, particularly the inspiring legacy of work by scholars/activists Michelle Fine, María Elena Torre, and M Brinton Lykes (e.g., see Fine & Torre, 2021; Lykes, in press). While we have only just begun our foray into this work, we look forward to our ongoing journey and hope that our reflections here can act in the service of supporting others in their efforts to take up research for change.