An Introduction to Community Operational Research

It is common for introductory chapters of edited books to start by defining their subject matter. However, in this case, it is really the task of the whole book, not this paragraph, to communicate the meaning of Community Operational Research (‘Community OR’ for short). We say this because we believe that healthy research networks involve a diversity of participants with both common and divergent interests, and the Community OR network is no exception. For us to specify right at the start of this book what Community OR is all about would almost certainly mean marginalising other people’s concerns. We therefore prefer to portray Community OR, not as a finite set of ideas or activities, but as a label used by a variety of people engaged in debate and on-going learning about their own and other people’s community development practices.

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