Collaborative/Participatory Research

Collaborative (or, participatory) research involves a working relationship between at least one academic institution's research unit and one community-based organization. The community-based organizations of interest are those from and representing underserved communities. Barriers to collaboration, approaches to overcoming such barriers, and principles for the maintenance of good collaborative research relations are given. Representatives of the underserved and academic research units tend to interact in a collaborative/participatory relationship by means of formal committees. How the degrees of power of the underserved on such committees might be understood is discussed in terms of a model from Arnstein's 1971 article and the value of participation for the underserved is discussed.