Community-Engaged Research Continuum
History: This continuum activity draws on the ideas of Sheila Arnstein’s “Ladder of Citizen Participation” that illustrated the levels of citizen power in relationship to government power. This concept has been adapted for many other settings over the years, including a youth-participation version by Roger Hart, and a youth-engaged research continuum developed by Youth In Focus. This adaptation was developed by Jonathan London with the UC Davis Center for Regional Change, as a learning tool for environmental and health science researchers seeking to enhance their engagement with environmental justice communities. With proper attribution, we encourage users of this activity to innovate and modify it to suit their needs and contexts, and then to share it with others for their adaptations.
Goal: The Community-Engaged Research Continuum activity is intended to provide an introduction to variations in approaches to engagement and to help participants to reflect on how to develop a level of community engagement that best fits their needs and capacities.
Key Messages: There are many approaches to community-engaged research. The “goodness” of an approach is not based only on the amount or kind of engagement, but the alignment between any given approach and the specific context. This includes the aims of the research, capacities of the researchers, capacities of the community partners, and other factors.
Process:
Preparation: Adapt the language in the scenarios to fit the topical interests of the participants and the contexts of the research program. Determine how to distribute the scenarios to participants. The activity can be run with a wide range of sized groups. Ideally, there will be 2-5 people for
UC Davis Center for Regional Change each of the scenarios to promote dialogue. Given the 12 scenarios provided below, this can serve anywhere from 12 to 60 participants.
Identify appropriate activity space with enough room for the participants to stand shoulder to shoulder in the continua described below. With larger groups, each scenario group can send a representative to stand up in the continuum formation.
Introduction: Introduce the goal of the activity to the participants. Distribute scenarios to the groups.
Small group discussion: Each group reads over their scenario and discusses how it may fall on the continuum.
Form an illustrative continuum: Invite the groups to use the scenarios to form a continuum from low to high community engagement in a suitably sized/ configured space. This will require that the groups interact with the other groups to locate themselves relative to each other. Once the groups have arranged themselves, invite the groups to paraphrase their scenario and describe why they located themselves where they did on the continuum. Ask clarifying questions and invite participant comments, as appropriate. Provide some synthesis insights along the way, pointing out some of the patterns that are emerging. Once all the groups have presented, allow groups to move themselves to different locations on the continuum based on hearing all of the others present.
Form a descriptive continuum: Invite the participants to create a second continuum, placing themselves in a location based on the degrees of their own current level of community engagement. Ask for examples or comments from the group on why they placed themselves where they did.
Form an aspiration continuum Invite the group to create a third continuum, this time representing their aspirational goal (choosing a relevant time line for achieving this). Ask for examples or comments from the group. Ask the participants to consider what kinds of resources, capacities, and other supports needed to move from their current practices to their goal state.
UC Davis Center for Regional Change How can they obtain these resources? From where? With whom?
Reflection Invite comments/ questions from the group about the activity as a whole. o What challenges and opportunities does it suggest for their future work on community engagement? o What are some next steps they could take to support an increase in community engagement? o What are some remaining dilemmas and how might they address them? Depending on the size of the group, this reflection can happen with the whole group, or in smaller groups who can then share back some key highlights/ ah-hah moments (not a summary) with the full group.
UC Davis Center for Regional Change You are doing research on environmental human exposure to soil remediation products and processes. In addition to your peer-reviewed publications, you provide your findings to private waste companies to push for expanded waste sites near low-income communities of color.
You are doing research on environmental detection of paraquat. You develop your research framework based on scientific literature. You write articles and books as a sole author for academic presses.
You are doing research on environmental exposure of humans to pesticides. In addition to academic conferences, you also present your findings at environmental justice conferences, to environmental justice advocates, and to policy makers.
You are doing research on effects of environmental pollution on an indicator non-human species. You develop your research framework based on focus groups with environmental professionals as well as academic literature. You write articles and books as a sole author for academic presses and present your research at academic conferences.
UC Davis Center for Regional Change You are doing research on human exposure to arsenic from water. You develop your research framework based the relevant scientific literature as well as informed by focus groups with environmental professionals and environmental justice activists.
You are doing research on human exposure to particulate matter from industrial operations . You employ environmental justice activists as research assistants to transcribe interviews and keep track of research materials. You conduct the analysis and write up articles on your own.
You are doing research on human exposure to particulate matter from industrial operations . You employ environmental justice activists to help conduct focus groups. You conduct the analysis and write up articles on your own.
You are doing research on human exposure to flame retardants. You invite environmental justice activists to volunteer to help shape your research design, conduct focus groups and assist in the data analysis. You write up the articles on your own.
UC Davis Center for Regional Change You are doing research on human exposure to biosolids. You employ environmental justice activists to help shape your research design, help conduct focus groups and assist in the data analysis. You co-author some pieces with these environmental justice activists.
You are doing research on bioremediation of heavy metals. You provide training for environmental justice activists to conduct their own research as part of your larger study. You co-author some pieces with them, and work with them to present the findings in policy settings addressing environmental justice.
Environmental justice activists conduct their own research. You offer technical assistance based on your scientific expertise, which they can use at their discretion.
UC Davis Center for Regional Change
Contact information: [email protected] http://regionalchange.ucdavis.edu/
530-752-3007
One Shields Avenue 2017 Wickson Hall UC Davis Davis CA, 95616
UC Davis Center for Regional Change