Claiming Your Principles

Principles and Core Values in CBPR Partnerships and Community Engaged Research Projects

 

Exercise:  Principles and Core Values in Partnerships
Goals	Identify core values and principles present in partnerships Understand how these values shape the research process
Instructions	INTRODUCTION TO THE EXERCISE (10 MINS) This is an exercise about identifying the core values we bring to research partnerships and understanding how these values shape the research process. You will first reflect on some questions, then share your responses with your partners, such as your community advisory board or task force, and contrast your shared values with community-based participatory research (CBPR) principles.
Step 1:	PERSONAL REFLECTION (5-10 minutes) Reflexivity and self-awareness are central to good CBPR practice, because the process of how we come together and work together matters. Many of you have worked in partnerships, either research or organizing.  Write down 2-3 examples of values that may typically guide how people work together in partnership. Write down 2-3 concerns that people may have in going into a partnership. Think about what you bring to partnerships and how you would bring those values and commitments to a research partnership. Write these down.
Step 2:	PARTNER SHARING (30 minutes) Within your partnership,  share your responses to the questions below. Ask for a volunteer to record responses or take turns writing responses to each (you can create columns: core values/concerns):   Be sure to hear from both academic researchers and from community partners. What are core values for you when engaging in research partnerships? Why are those values important to you? What are concerns that you have when engaging in research partnerships? What do you look forward to sharing or what strengths do you bring to a partnership? What do you hope to gain from your partners from other walks of life (community, academics, etc.)? As people are sharing, identify and note shared threads and commonalities in values and concerns that come up, as well as the differences. Discuss what you learned from this exercise and how it may help you move forward as a partnership.
	INTRODUCTION OF COMMUNITY BASED PARTICIPATORY RESEARCH (CBPR) PRINCIPLES (10-15 minutes) Handout Researchers have articulated basic guiding principles for CBPR that speak to some of the underlying values. Two sets of principles are presented in this handout: 1) Israel et al principles that are widely accepted as core principles in the literature; and 2) Walters et al – a newer set of principles from an indigenous perspective. As a team, review these principles and ask yourselves: How do they compare to your team’s core values? What do they tell you about CBPR as a practice? What principles have you added or would you add?  (i.e., paying attention to issues of race/ethnicity, gender and class; having commitment to cultural humility; etc.). Discuss what you learned from this comparison to the literature and how it may help you move forward as a partnership.

© Engage for Equity, Nina Wallerstein, Center for Participatory Research, University of New Mexico, 2016  

 

Key Principles of CBPR

 

1. Acknowledges community as a unit of identity.
2. Builds on strengths and resources within the community.
3. Facilitates a collaborative, equitable partnership in all phases of research, involving an empowering and power-sharing process that attends to social inequalities.
4. Fosters co-learning and capacity building among all partners.
5. Integrates and achieves a balance between knowledge generation and intervention for the mutual benefit of all partners.
6. Focuses the local relevance of public health problems and ecological perspectives on multiple determinants of health.
7. Involves systems development using a cyclical and iterative process.
8. Disseminates results to all partners and involves them in the wider dissemination of results.
9. Involves a long-term process and commitment to sustainability.

 

Israel, B. A., Eng, E., Schulz, A. J., & Parker, E. A. (2013). Introduction to methods in community-based participatory research for health, 2nd edition.  In B. A. Israel, E. Eng, A. J. Schulz & E. A. Parker (Eds.), Methods in community-based participatory research for health. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

 

Guiding Principles for Decolonizing and Indigenizing Research

 

 

• Reflection

 

True partnerships begin with reflection upon the privileged statuses from which most partners operate and the emotionally difficult task of acknowledging the pain of Native communities and developing empathy.

 

• Respect

 

Research partners must value and prioritize indigenous epistemologies, knowledge, cultural protocols, and healing practices.

 

• Relevance

 

The community should contribute to defining research problems and strategies, which should respond to their own self-identified needs and concerns.

 

• Resilience

 

All aspects of the research must acknowledge the community’s strengths and resilience.

 

• Reciprocity

 

The partnership should be collaborative and mutually respectful with knowledge exchanged in both directions.

 

• Responsibility

 

Research partners are obliged to enhance community capacity to conduct Indigenous and Western research, disseminate research findings in culturally meaningful ways, and anticipate the implications.



 

• Retraditionalization

 

Traditional knowledge and methods must be actively integrated into the formulation of the research questions and the process of scientific inquiry.

 

• Revolution

 

Research partners and community members must actively seek to decolonize and indigenize the research process to transform science as well as themselves, their communities, and the larger society for the betterment of all.   

 

Walters, K.L., Stately, A., Evans-Campbell, T., Simoni, J.M., Duran, B., et al., (2009). “Indigenist” collaborative research efforts in Native American communities. In A. R. n (Ed.), The field research survival guide. (pp. 3-26). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.