Participatory action research

See Urban Heat.
See Smart Communities.

Participatory action research (PAR) is one of a range of similar approaches (e.g. action research and community-based participatory research), can take many forms and resists definition. Nonetheless, most approaches have a number of common characteristics. Through concurrent action and research, PAR endeavours to bring new forms of knowledge – rooted within the everyday experiences of ordinary people – to bear, within the context of social issues, such as: health, migration, race and ethnicity, community development and sustainability. PAR typically utilises an in-depth case study approach in which a series of participatory processes are undertaken in collaboration with members of the relevant social group or community, as well as – where appropriate – relevant policy and practice stakeholders.

PAR emphasises the importance of research with as opposed to research on. With its emphasis on action, PAR typically has the objectives of prompting learning among the project participants and promoting direct change within the context of the case study. In this sense, PAR is somewhat similar to ‘community engagement and participation’, in particular those approaches which have empowerment and partnership with local institutions as their desired outcomes. With its emphasis on research, PAR has the objective of enhancing the researchers’ understanding of social phenomena with a view to broader dissemination that can inform future practice and policy. Given the objectives of learning among both the project participants and the researchers, we can speak of mutual learning – from each other and from the PAR process – as a key objective of PAR. This is important because it implies that both the researchers and the participants must be understood and valued as experts. More specifically, while the facilitators might be described as formal experts, the participants can be described as lay experts or ‘experts of/by experience’; this term is used to describe individuals whose expertise is derived from a particular facet of every day experience and is widely used in the UK healthcare sector .


Participatory action research typically yields qualitative evidence from a range of sources. As well as more formal evidence (such as interview and workshop transcripts), the evidence from PAR is often informal, gathered in the course of conversations, email exchanges and experiences during the implementation of the project action. Insights from this blend of data are, therefore, typically interpretive, yet have the potential to yield in-depth and powerful new understandings of particular social phenomena, and the ways in which change does or does not take place within particular contexts. 

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