Participatory Action Research

: Psychology and social change. (1997). Mary Brydon-Miller. Journal of social issues, 53 (4), 657-666.

PAR can be defined as a process of research, education, and action (Hall, 1981, Participatory research, popular knowledge and power: A personal reflection. Convergence, 14(3), 6-1 7).

Hall explained: The term participatory research was first used in the early 1970s in the research in Tanzania that drew on local knowledge and expertise in developing a project. Fals-Borda preferred the term PAR to emphasize the social change component of the work. In India, Tandon developed similar approaches to conducting community-based research.

Brydon-Miller finds its major philosophical influence in the work of Freire, who emphasized experience-based learning and developing critical consciousness from this knowledge through repeated cycles of action-and-reflection. The author stated that this cycle lies at the heart of PAR's knowledge generation.

One of the distinctions between PAR and more traditional research is in the acknowledgment of the political nature of research. PAR rejects value-free knowledge production. Brydon-Miller noted that this acknowledgment allows researcher to act in a more direct manner upon social issues.

Brydon-Miller described a basic set of tenets of PAR by following Hall (1981):
PAR originates in communities and populations that have traditionally been exploited; PAR addresses specific concerns of the community and the fundamental causes of oppression in order to bring about change; and PAR is a process of research, education, and action.

Brydon-Miller asserted the difficulty in typifying the methodology of PAR. In this light, she stated:

PAR can and does use what might seem to be fairly traditional methods of social scientific inquiry such as community questionnaires and interviews, the fundamental difference being that in PAR, members of the community determine which methods to use. (p. 661) [This indicates PAR is not a kind of methods, which is often divided into QUAL and QUAN. Both can be used in PAR but under a different set of rules, i.e., who determines what methods to use.]

She continued to state:

They then develop or adapt the research instruments and learn to carry out the research and to take part in analyzing the results. Finally, and most important, they own the results of the research and can determine how the information is to be used in addressing the concerns they have articulated. In addition to more standard methods, PAR also utilizes a variety of other approaches, including popular theater, political action, group discussions, community seminars, educational camps, intercultural exchange programs, video productions, and storytelling, to name just a few. (p. 661).