Practical suggestions for community interventions using participatory action research.

Advanced practice nurses and nurse researchers with experience in clinical settings may encounter challenges in the initial development and implementation of community-based projects. Participatory action research methodology, a user-friendly framework for community-based research activities, provides a way for researchers and community members to work together to define a problem, take action, and evaluate their work. This article attempts to bridge the theory-implementation gap by describing background steps that researchers can use when conceptualizing and initiating a research project with community partners. Suggestions for initial steps and the planning and review cycles are presented, along with examples from the literature.

[1]  P. Kovacs.  Participatory Action Research and Hospice: A Good Fit , 2000, The Hospice journal.

[2]  D. Henderson,et al.  Consciousness raising in participatory research: Method and methodology for emancipatory nursing inquiry , 1995, ANS. Advances in nursing science.

[3]  U. Choudhry,et al.  Health promotion and participatory action research with South Asian women. , 2002, Journal of nursing scholarship : an official publication of Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing.

[4]  L. McGuinness,et al.  Significant elements of community involvement in participatory action research: evidence from a community project. , 1998, Journal of advanced nursing.

[5]  L. Hamberger,et al.  Community Collaboration to Develop Research Programs in Partner Violence , 2000 .

[6]  J. Meyer,et al.  New paradigm research in practice: the trials and tribulations of action research. , 1993, Journal of advanced nursing.

[7]  V. Scott,et al.  The STEPS Project: participatory action research to reduce falls in public places among seniors and persons with disabilities. , 1997, Canadian journal of public health = Revue canadienne de sante publique.

[8]  A Moyer,et al.  Health Literature , 1871, Hall's journal of health.

[9]  M. Barnes.  Introducing new stakeholders - user and researcher interests in evaluative research; a discussion of methods used to evaluate the birmingham community care special action project , 1993 .

[10]  D. Kralik,et al.  Enhancing lives through the development of a community-based participatory action research programme. , 2002, Journal of clinical nursing.

[11]  M. Parsons,et al.  Formerly Incarcerated Women Create Healthy Lives through Participatory Action Research , 2002, Holistic nursing practice.

[12]  P. Park.  The discovery of participatory research as a new scientific paradigm: Personal and intellectual accounts , 1992 .

[13]  D. McLean,et al.  Qualitative Methodologies and Community Participation in Examining Reproductive Experiences: The Harlem Birth Right Project , 2001, Maternal and Child Health Journal.

[14]  Andrea Cornwall,et al.  What is participatory research? , 1995, Social science & medicine.

[15]  R. Al-Qutob.  Menopause-associated problems: types and magnitude. A study in the Ain Al-Basha area, Jordan. , 2001, Journal of advanced nursing.