Afromontane Research Unit and Faculty of Education, University of the Free State, Qwaqwa, South Africa.
Jean Hailes Research Unit, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.
Health Promot Int. 2020 Feb 1;35(1):e59-e69. doi: 10.1093/heapro/day121.
Community participation in all aspects of health research is widely advocated. However, there is a lack of specificity in reporting what community members actually do, and reported participation is typically limited to discrete research activities. Greater specificity in reporting has potential to clarify how community participation might occur and how it might influence empowerment and research rigour. We conducted an ethnographic study of participatory health research (PHR) in a socio-economically marginalized rural Swazi community. Data about 10 community co-researchers' participation in research workshops and field work were collected through participant observation over 14 months and analysed using directed content analysis, informed by the Comprehensive Community Participation in Research Framework (CCPRF). The analysis demonstrated that facilitating extensive community participation in PHR is feasible and identified 10 new research process activities in which community members might participate, for inclusion in an expanded CCPRF. We provide examples of how community members might participate in 57/59 expanded CCPRF activities and show that participatory, dialogue-based activities can be effective tools for facilitating research participation in ways that empower individual co-researchers and enhance research rigour. However, our results highlight limitations of community participation related to utilizing research results to inform actions, and empowering communities to control their environments and improve their health.
社区参与健康研究的各个方面被广泛提倡。然而，目前在报告社区成员实际所做的工作方面缺乏具体性，报告的参与通常仅限于离散的研究活动。在报告中更加具体地说明社区参与的方式以及可能影响赋权和研究严谨性的方式，具有澄清这些问题的潜力。我们对斯威士兰一个社会经济边缘化农村社区的参与式健康研究（PHR）进行了民族志研究。通过 14 个月的参与观察，收集了 10 名社区共同研究者参与研究研讨会和实地工作的数据，并使用有指导的内容分析进行分析，该分析受全面社区参与研究框架（CCPRF）的启发。分析表明，促进 PHR 中广泛的社区参与是可行的，并确定了 10 种新的研究过程活动，这些活动可以让社区成员参与进来，以纳入扩展的 CCPRF。我们提供了社区成员如何参与扩展的 CCPRF 中 57/59 项活动的示例，并展示了参与式、基于对话的活动可以作为有效的工具，以赋权个体共同研究者和提高研究严谨性的方式促进研究参与。然而，我们的研究结果强调了社区参与在利用研究结果来指导行动以及赋权社区控制其环境和改善健康方面的局限性。
