This week in Applied Social Psychology, we discussed participatory action research, which is much different than other forms of research I have learned about in my other psychology courses. In her article, Brydon-Miller (1997) describes participatory action research (PAR) as education, research, and action processes that have the goal of bringing about social change. Specifically, Brydon-Miller (1997) explains that participatory action research has the following characteristics:
- PAR addresses social issues that affect exploited and oppressed groups of people (Brydon-Miller, 1997).
- The issues within PAR are addressed by the individuals, families, and communities they affect (Brydon-Miller, 1997).
- Individuals, families, and communities that are affected by an issue addressed within PAR are encouraged to take on an active role within PAR (Brydon-Miller, 1997).
After learning about PAR, I decided to create my own hypothetical research study by using Burns, Cooke, & Schweidler’s (2011) outline of PAR:
Step 1: Identify the issue- I have noticed that a significant amount of my female friends, peers, and colleagues suffer/suffered from some type of eating disorder (anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge-eating disorder, & body dysmorphia). Why are young adult females so vulnerable to eating disorders? I hypothesize that exposure to the “ideal” female body in the media is correlated to the engagement in disordered eating behaviors in young adult females.
Step 2: Identify participants- Along with myself, my female friends, peers, and colleagues who are/have been affected or feel vulnerable to eating disorders would be recruited to be stakeholders in my PAR. I would ask my Abnormal Psychology professor, Dr. Dubyak, to join my PAR because she is a clinical psychologist with research experience, and the topic is one that can/could have affected her as well.
Step 3: Collect the data- My participants and myself would create a self-reported questionnaire. We would create our questionnaire through a website that allowed participants to answer anonymously, which would reduce any response bias from social desirability, and allow us to easily reach more participants than using a hard-copy questionnaire. Not only would we be answering the questionnaire ourselves, through text message and email we could send the link to the questionnaire to people who originally chose not to be part of my PAR in hopes that they would find the study to be relevant to them, and then become a participant/stakeholder in the study and hold an active role.
Example Questionnaire (Link to Word document): eating disorder questionnaire-s93azg
Step 4: Analyze the data- My participants and I would use measures of central tendency (mean and median of scores) to analyze the data from the questionnaire. With this data, we would create a scatter plot to show the visual relationship between exposure to the “ideal” female body in the media and engagement in disordered eating. If we found a positive relationship between these two variables, we could assume there is a correlation (but not causal relationship) between exposure to the “ideal” female body in the media and engagement in disordered eating.
Step 5: Report the data- Unfortunately, there will never be a way to get all media outlets to stop exposing people to the “ideal” body. With this being said, one way to help decrease eating disorders is by educating vulnerable people about the affects exposure to the “ideal” body can have on them. My participants and I would report our findings through various outlets that would reach everyone who is vulnerable to eating disorders. We could make posters that illustrate our findings and ask high schools, universities, and other public places to post them. Also, we could publish our study with the help of Dr. Dubyak and ask universities to share the study with their students. We could also post our findings on various social media outlets, which will probably reach our targeted audience the most.
After creating my own hypothetical research study using PAR, I realized how beneficial PAR can be. The people who are being affected by an issue will not only be the most motivated to initiate change, but can have greater influence/reach to communities they are a part of than an outside researcher.
References:
Burns, Cooke, & Schweidler. (2011). A Short Guide to Community Based Participatory Action Research. Retrieved from https://hc-v6-static.s3.amazonaws.com/media/resources/tmp/cbpar.pdf
Brydon-Miller, M. (1997). Participatory action research: Psychology and social change. Journal of Social Issues, 53(4), 657-666. doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/10.1111/0022-4537.00042