About the presentation
Introduction/background/issues
Participatory Action Research (PAR) has emerged as a common approach used in community-based research. It acknowledges the place of community in defining its own actions to improve population health and wellbeing. Developmental evaluation is a more recent concept, which focuses on applying complexity concepts to enhance innovation and use. We explore the alignment between these two approaches by using a remote Indigenous case-study.
Methods
Charles Darwin University recently embarked on the Higher Education Participation and Partnerships Program – Whole of Community Engagement (HEPPP-WCE) initiative. This involves working with six remote Indigenous communities across the Northern Territory to build aspiration, expectation and capacity to participate in higher education using a ‘whole of community engagement’ approach. This is a multi-site PAR project involving a combination of interviews, observational techniques, photography, critical reflections and case studies.
Results/discussions
Our PAR approach has indicated the importance of valuing local context and acknowledging complexity. The explorative and community-focused nature of HEPPP-WCE means that linear and phased research and evaluation approaches, such as the use of program logic, are not well suited to the contexts in which we are working. This instigated a need to find an evaluation model that would cater for complexity, contextual and cultural factors. Developmental evaluation fills this niche, and is emerging as a new and innovative approach in health promotion evaluation practice. We argue that there are synergies between developmental evaluation and PAR, which include acknowledging complexity and uncertainty; appreciating change and improvement; valuing new or alternative knowledge systems (such as Indigenous knowledges); and listening to and respecting community viewpoints.
Conclusions/implications
We argue that there is theoretical, conceptual and practical congruence between PAR and developmental evaluation approaches.
Key message
PAR and developmental evaluation are closely aligned. Combined, they have a high degree of utility in research, policy and practice contexts which favour bottom-up community engagement approaches.
