MethodologY
Why I lean on community-engaged research (CEnR)
CEnR is a strong part of my practice, first developing my skills in engaging communities through frontline practice and community engagement and translating this into research. I have a strong understanding of engaging diverse communities and facilitating bringing people together to share their experiences and knowledge.
CEnR is an approach that has existed for over 70 years and academically is most aligned with my approach as a researcher. It welcomes and includes people to share their experiences and stories and gather thick descriptions of their experiences.
Definition
What even is CEnR?
CEnR bridges the gap between the knowledge people hold, their stories and deeply personal experiences, and the organisations, programs and services that want to access this information to better meet community needs.
Definition of community
In this work, community is any group of people that hold knowledge and experiences that will be impacted by the decisions and actions we take. This includes people in an organisation (executives, teams, employees) and outside an organisation (communities, customers, consumers).
CEnR Definition
In CEnR, this community knowledge is valued and respected. It guides research questions, methods and outcomes, rather than this being led by the researcher’s or organisation’s perspective. Its purpose has always been empowering people and communities to lead their involvement – what they share, how they share it and how their experiences are represented in the research outcomes.
CEnR not only looks to gather knowledge and translate peoples experiences and community insights, but it also aims to promote participation and collaboration in all aspects of research. In CEnR, researchers and participants work as close as possible together, with the research continuing to be guided by community knowledge to come up with solutions together.
CEnR is sometimes is known as, or similar to:
Community-based research
Participatory research
Youth-led participatory action research
Participatory and co-research
Human-centred research and design (co-design)
In practice
Looking at CEnR in Practice (CEnR-P)
I speak with a lot of organisations who want to engage better with their community (staff, service users, donors, clients etc) and understand more about their real-world experiences and perspectives. CEnR is perfect for this purpose as it’s an approach we can use to solve challenges, using research methodologies designed to engage people closest to the problem and most impacted by the solution. But what often comes up when organisations start to do this work is barriers, limitations and misconceptions that can get in the way of applying CEnR effectively.
For example:
Work is often budgeted and scoped before communities, teams and consultants are engaged, which can create tensions between CEnR knowledge-gathering practices and organisational expectations around timelines and productivity.
If community relationships are not built or established before the work begins, it is very difficult to engage with people in a meaningful way.
Organisational pressures to increase productivity can lead to short cuts, including skipping deeper engagement and participation to save time.
There is a common misconception that enabling community to participate in the project end-to-end takes more time. In my experience, CEnR is more like the saying "go slow, to go fast". More time spent upfront actually leads to faster, better and more sustainable outcomes.
When organisations can fully embrace, budget for, and trust in the process of meaningful participation and engagement, they reap the benefits – and so does their community. This is why I’m so passionate about supporting organisations to navigate the challenges and embed CEnR in practice. This means looking at how we can be accountable to community, while also working within organisational constraints.
CEnR-P aims to uncover the barriers for organisations and what it looks like in the real-world to embed CEnR. For example, what are the potential organisational constraints and what conditions are needed to lean on CEnR more in practice? When we understand the barriers, we can better understand the conditions and containers of work we need to remain community-centred, and where knowledge of communities are respected, and can be protected.
CEnR-P looks at where CEnR can be applied to improve the work that we do, including where CEnR can better contribute to the process of engaging community, and translating their knowledge in the context of the work, and the service-system it exists in to inform our work and drive the impact we want to make. CenR in practice can provide a roadmap not only on how to engage community, but how to document their experiences using a methodology that is proven, robust, credible and designed to put people's experiences at the centre of the work we do. It further looks at how to present the knowledge, and provide a pathway where these voices are trusted by organisations and decision makers,
Get in Touch
Let's talk about your next project
If you are looking to embed CEnR-P in practice, in a project or part of your role in an organisation, reach out!