Was it good for you too? Impediments to conducting university-based collaborative research with communities experiencing disadvantage

2009 vol. 33 no. 5 AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF PUBLIC HEALTH 407© 2009 The Authors. Journal Compilation © 2009 Public Health Association of Australia

A growing amount of literature

discusses col laborat ive and

participatory research (CPR)

projects and methods. Much of this writing

emerges from North America.2-10 This

literature often focuses on promoting the

benefits of collaborative methodologies

or on outlining how such research should

optimally be conducted. Scant attention

has been paid to difficulties encountered by

researchers and university based community-

liaison staff in their efforts to conduct CPR

within institutional and professional contexts

in Australia or indeed other countries.

This article draws on a small study of

research projects involving collaboration

between university-based researchers and

representatives of communities experiencing

various forms of disadvantage in Melbourne,

Australia. It aims to provide a synthesis of

some difficulties experienced by university-

based staff in conducting CPR and to offer

suggestions on how CPR might be supported

in Australian universities in the future.

We def ine collaborative CPR as any

project where collaboration and participation

of communities or their representatives

(beyond simply being involved as research

subjects) is critical to the conduct of the

Was it good for you too? Impediments to conducting

university-based collaborative research with

communities experiencing disadvantage

Sarah MacLeanTurning Point Alcohol and Drug Centre and Centre for Health and Society, School of Population Health, University of Melbourne, Victoria

Deborah WarrMcCaughey Centre, VicHealth Centre for the Promotion of Mental Health and Community Wellbeing School of Population Health, University of Melbourne, Victoria

Priscilla PyettDepartment of Rural and Indigenous Health, Monash University, Victoria

Submitted: February 2009 Revision requested: June 2009 Accepted: June 2009Correspondence to:Dr Sarah MacLean, Turning Point Alcohol and Drug Centre, 54-62 Gertrude Street,Fitzroy, Victoria, 3065. Fax: (03) 9416 3420; e-mail: [email protected]

research, and where the aim of research is

to achieve some benefit for communities

concerned.11 Universities engage with

diverse communities, from industry to

policy and professional groups. The focus

of this article is on difficulties experienced

by university-based research staff engaged

in collaborative health and welfare research

involving communities that experience

disadvantage or disenfranchisement; for

instance Indigenous communities, same-sex

attracted young people, homeless young

people or people living in areas of socio-

economic marginality.

CPR is believed to be particularly

suited to contexts of social and economic

disadvantage where its benefits have ethical,

methodological and practical dimensions.

Broadly, CPR approaches foster and

sustain participation of disenfranchised

communities in the processes of research.

A significant ethical advantage of CPR is

that it can be used to empower communities

by offering opportunities to influence the

design of research, to develop skills and to

become involved in developing strategies to

address social and health inequality.3,4,8,11,12

Methodological advantages of CPR include

ensuring the relevance of research and the

Abstract

Objective: Collaborative and participatory

research (CPR) models are increasingly

recognised as methodologically, ethically

and practically appropriate to conducting

health and welfare research involving

disadvantaged communities. This paper

identifies impediments to CPR and proposes

measures to support and encourage future

CPR in Australian universities.

Methods: This paper draws on a small

qualitative study of university-based CPR

projects in Melbourne. The study involved

a literature review and interviews with 23

participants, comprising university-based

researchers and community liaison officers,

and community representatives involved in

university-based research projects.

Results: The paper outlines four main

difficulties encountered by university-based

researchers and community liaison staff

in conducting CPR. These are: managing

community sensitivities, the time-

consuming nature of the work and diverse

tasks involved, difficulty securing adequate

research funding, and a concern that CPR

was detrimental to academic careers.

Conclusion: CPR in universities might

be supported in the future through

providing CPR training for researchers,

employing additional community liaison

staff, recognising community reports

within the Australian research quality

evaluation system Excellence in Research

for Australia, adopting supportive policies

within universities and provision of

dedicated CPR funding.

Implications: In the current Australian

university context of competitive funding,

further research into CPR nationally,

alongside dedicated resources and policies

are required to maximise the benefits of

this approach.

Key words: Research design, information

dissemination, vulnerable populations,

community-based participatory research.

Aust N Z J Public Health. 2009; 33:407-12

doi: 10.1111/j.1753-6405.2009.00420.x

Article Research methods

408 AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF PUBLIC HEALTH 2009 vol. 33 no. 5© 2009 The Authors. Journal Compilation © 2009 Public Health Association of Australia

appropriateness of measurement tools.13 On a practical level,

CPR may also be a useful way of accessing populations that are

marginalised and hard to reach such as Indigenous communities

who have previously had negative experiences of involvement in

research.11,14 Collaboration also facilitates knowledge exchange

and uptake of findings.12,15

Research funding bodies in Australia encourage projects

that will benefit the community, and community participation

is seen as an important way to enhance the relevance, conduct

and dissemination of research.16 Since 2005, for instance,

National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC)

grant applications require researchers to stipulate and report on

how consumer or community participation will be incorporated

into their projects.17 Nonetheless, Australian health research

is primarily investigator-driven and structured community

involvement remains relatively rare.18,19

Optimal practice in collaborative participatory research

The literature describes a range of elements common to

successful research collaborations between communities

and researchers (see ref 2, 4, 11, 12, 20-24). Developing and

maintaining research partnerships requires major investments

of time from both community and university-based participants.

Research partners should be involved from the very beginning of

the project so they may contribute to the project’s design. Trust

is essential to any research partnership and must be earned over

time by sensitive and considerate interaction with the community.

Extensive negotiation and consultation is likely to be required prior

to the commencement of any project to formulate and agree on

common goals. A meaningful role for community participants in

the research should be established and maintained. Roles of all

partners should be clearly defined and funds should be available

to recompense community members for contributions. All parties

must maintain an awareness of the political context of any research

project. Partners must be sufficiently flexible to renegotiate

arrangements where necessary and decision making should be

democratic. It is important also that research be conducted in an

ethical manner if all parties are to remain committed to the process.

Projects should also aim to build the research and advocacy skills

of community participants. Finally, feeding back research findings

to community participants and working to ensure the project results

in health and welfare benefits for communities concerned are also

essential elements of effective CPR.

MethodThe research project on which this paper draws used a critical

reflexive methodology.25-27 Two of the investigators were included

as key informants and their experiences as community researchers

have informed the analysis. Ethical approval to conduct the

research was acquired from the University of Melbourne,

School of Population Health Human Research Ethics Committee

and participants provided informed consent. A project report

was disseminated outlining case studies of CPR involving

disadvantaged communities and strategies utilised to facilitate

community engagement.1

Twenty-three participants took part in research interviews,

each selected because of recent involvement in CPR involving

partnership between universities and communities experiencing

disadvantage in Melbourne. Seven researchers and seven

community liaison officers, community development or project

staff employed at universities (all referred to as CLOs) were

interviewed, alongside nine community members or representatives

of community-based agencies.

Interviews were of 30-70 minutes duration and utilised a

conversational approach.28 Theme sheets were used to focus

interviews. Interview transcripts and research notes were coded

using the qualitative software package NVivo. A thematic

analysis29 was used to structure the coding and identify

findings.

Challenges encountered by university-based research staff

Significant differences emerged between optimal approaches

to CPR outlined in the literature and the projects undertaken by

participants in our study. For instance, very few studies involved

communities from the project instigation stage: the majority

were investigator-driven and decision making, while generally

consultative, was not always democratic. Some projects with

which participants had been involved did not entail developing

clear goals or project agreements with community participants.

Few projects had funding to reimburse community participants for

their contributions to research. Only a minority of projects actively

endeavoured to empower and upskill members of disadvantaged

communities.

Equal input from all participants in research is not a pre-

requisite for achieving positive outcomes for disadvantaged

communities and limitations on community partner involvement

do not necessarily negate the value of CPR projects in the study.

Nonetheless researchers and CLOS participating in the study

frequently voiced disappointment that the institutional and funding

settings within which they worked restricted their capacity to

conduct research that met their own ethical or procedural standards

for community engagement.

Research and community liaison staff involved in the study

described four main difficulties they had experienced in conducting

CPR. These were: managing community sensitivities, the time-

consuming nature of CPR and diverse tasks involved, difficulty

securing adequate funding and concern that engaging in CPR was

detrimental to academic careers.

Managing community sensitivitiesResearchers working in communities experiencing disadvantage

invariably encounter complex ethical and procedural issues.

For instance, the literature identifies determining who is able to

represent the views of community members as a key concern for

CPR.4,22 Researchers in the study struggled with conflicts within

MacLean, Warr and Pyett Article


communities over who ought to be consulted or who was qualified

to represent whom. As a researcher told us:

“You have competition within the community as to who should

represent the community.”

This was particularly problematic in instances when university

requirements such as securing ethical approval required that

researchers demonstrate community involvement, yet researchers

were aware also that some peak bodies or organisations were not

actually representative of those individuals likely to participate

in the research. They felt that some community group members’

lack of understanding of the research process occasionally leads to

unrealistic expectations and dissatisfaction with research outcomes

or time-frames. Researchers were also wary of providing too little

or too much information to communities, fearing insulting them

by oversimplifying findings or alternatively presenting material

in language that was too obtuse. At times researchers found

dealing with the complex politics of community work stressful

and distressing.

Time-consuming nature of CPR and diverse tasks involved

CPR is notoriously slow work.4 Extensive time for consultation

and negotiation is required from project conception to

implementation and eventual research dissemination. Other

researchers have noted that the significant investments of time

that goes into CPR approaches are borne by community members,

academic researchers and other stakeholders.30 Similarly, in this

study, researchers described how CPR involved many demands

on their time in attending community meetings, dissemination

activities and other engagements. One researcher spent six months

attending a community group before some of the more socially

isolated members felt comfortable to participate in research

interviews with her.

Researchers engaged in CPR must be prepared to respond to

diverse community needs. Some participants noted that to gain

entry to a community in order to negotiate research collaboration

they often needed to offer whatever expertise they could. This

might include, preparing grants on behalf of community-based

organisations, delivering professional development workshops

for community-based staff and volunteers, writing press releases

for local media and a range of advocacy work.

Working with communities can entail significant administrative

workloads. Non-academic tasks included identifying and contacting

community groups, arranging meetings, issuing invitations,

maintaining databases and mailing out reports. In the absence of

administrative capacity within research centres, researchers and

CLOs frequently undertook these roles themselves. Researchers also

found they spent significant time providing input to policy processes,

giving advice to community partners subsequent to conducting

research, or on research dissemination. One researcher observed of

his time spent on the project: ‘it was a lot of non-research work; it

was actually political work and policy work’. Another requirement

of CPR is to produce plain language reports for communities and

policy professionals and reports to funding bodies. These reports

take time to write and, as we shall discuss, count for little within

current systems of academic performance measurement.

Difficulty securing adequate fundingAdequate research funding for CPR is difficult to secure.

Funding bodies may be reluctant to provide grants for less

established research methodologies, such as CPR with long

lead-times, uncertain outcomes and additional resourcing

requirements.4 The benefits of CPR and related approaches are

often diffuse and hard to measure. Perspectives on the effectiveness

of any collaboration are likely to vary and few rigorous evaluations

of research collaborations have been undertaken12,31 Time-limited

competitive grant funding of research projects also makes

sustained community engagement problematic.20 Funding bodies,

furthermore, encourage research involving corporate or industry

partners. Researchers find less incentive to work with local or

disadvantaged communities that cannot contribute financially to

research projects.

It was widely argued by our research participants that Australian

research funding rarely provides sufficient resources to enable

academics to engage with community research partners and to

disseminate research findings to communities, as two researchers

observed:

“Funding is a key issue obviously. Funding rarely is sufficient

for time taken. Funding needs to recognise the time taken.”

“It’s very hard to get money and when you do it’s typically

underfunded. It doesn’t recognise time for relationship building

and relationship maintenance … That’s totally not recognised

or appreciated in the funding. Research transfer is also time-

consuming and frequently involves travel.”

CPR projects have a tendency to extend beyond set research

funding periods. For instance, researchers in the study reported

receiving ongoing requests to provide presentations for community

groups. Furthermore, the timelines of funding agencies are

seldom sufficiently flexible to accommodate the often necessarily

vague and indeterminate ending phase of a CPR project. A

university-based CLO commented, furthermore, that building

ongoing relationships with communities was difficult because

so many university staff are employed on short contracts due to

time-limited funding: “How are people going to be committed to

doing knowledge transfer from work when [they’re] not going to

be around?”

Academic career disadvantageUnder the Australian Department of Education, Employment and

Workplace Relations publication system Australian universities are

required to report on four kinds of publications: authored books,

chapters in research books, refereed journal articles and refereed

conference papers, but not community reports. Reportable

publications are valued by universities because they are counted

in funding allocations and are likewise an important measure of

success for academics.

Closely related to concerns over the time-consuming nature

of non-academic CPR activities was concern among researchers

Research methods Conducting collaborative research


about lost opportunity to produce peer-reviewed academic

publications and lack of recognition of CPR activities within their

workloads. Anxiety about the impact on academic careers of time

spent on community engagement or writing community reports

was frequently raised through interviews conducted for this study.

Although researchers often felt that CPR was valued within their

research centres, they were keenly aware that outputs from this

research were not counted in academic performance metrics, are

often difficult to publish in prestigious ‘high impact’ journals and,

as some perceived, are poorly valued within the university:

“We really suffered in terms of publications in doing this

[CPR]… There’s a huge personal cost for me and for some of the

other members of staff.”

“We do our booklets, our posters, we have all of our time out

in the field, which we feel is just as important as the research but

we have no incentive to do that at all – it doesn’t count. That’s the

biggest impediment to doing community work.”

“Places where you can publish reports on community work have

very low impact factors.”

Nonetheless, a couple of researchers also argued that CPR

brought recognition if researchers were able to actively promote

their work within the university. One way this had been done was

by tracking numbers of unique users downloading community

reports from internet sites.

DiscussionSuggestions for supporting CPR

Drawing on ideas proposed both in the literature and by our

research participants five key suggestions emerged as to how CPR

involving disadvantaged communities might be better supported

in Australia. These are: providing CPR training for researchers,

employing community liaison staff, recognising community

reports within the Australian research quality evaluation system,

adopting supportive policies within universities and dedicated

Australian CPR funding.

CPR training for researchers

Some researchers have far better skills in community liaison

than others.32 In North America, it has been argued that education

should be provided for researchers on the benefits of collaborative

approaches to research and how to initiate and conduct it.3,6

Participants in our study also advised that some researchers

require training in effective CPR and particularly how to

negotiate community politics. Some community representatives

also suggested that researchers would benefit from training in

communicating research findings to a non-specialist audience. Two

Indigenous participants suggested that researchers should do some

background reading to save community partners time informing

them of the community’s history or of particular sensitivities

around research within that community. Another community

worker advised that researchers should be advised to approach

agencies with clear and concise written statements of their aims

when seeking support for research.

Employing community liaison staff

In Australia, Mitchell and Walsh33 argue that academic staff

face institutional and professional impediments to establishing

and maintaining relationships with community partners. They

recommend therefore that dedicated intermediaries such as CLOs

are required to maximise the value of social research. While some

difficulties in relation to employment of CLOs were observed by

research participants,34 many advocated strongly that dedicated

and skilled staff are able to forge and maintain co-operative

relationship with communities and to ensure that research findings

are presented in accessible formats and actively disseminated.

CLOs may also have the time and expertise to navigate some of

the complexities of community engagement that research staff

find challenging, particularly in cases where liaison officers

are selected due to their membership of or identification with

communities involved.

Adopting supportive policies within universities

Universities must also adopt supportive policies if researchers

are to be encouraged to conduct CPR. For instance, university

promotion committees must recognise the challenges of CPR

and the different kinds of research outcomes (such as community

reports and training materials) produced through community

engagement.6 Policies to support CPR in universities might

include awards schemes for CPR3 and, as we shall discuss below,

measuring CPR as academic activity and output.

Various mechanisms for providing a focus for CPR within

universities were recommended by research participants. These

included funding CPR fellowships for researchers who are

developing expertise in this approach and providing additional

administrative assistance for researchers engaged in CPR. Another

recommendation made by one participant was that CPR offices

be established in universities to provide a focus for expertise in

the approach. Less expensive suggestions included instigating

support networks for CLOs, and providing a database of research

partnership agreements that might be adapted to meet the needs

of specific projects.

Recognising community reports within the Australian

research quality evaluation system

Butler has argued that metrics for funding and administrating

the tertiary sector are influential in shaping academic research.35

Decisions about what kinds of publications may be counted as

academic output have important implications for the viability of

CPR. Participants in our study argued strongly that they should

be able to record community reports and information resources

as academic outputs.

The federal Labour Government announced in early 2008 that

a new system for academic research quality assessment, titled

‘Excellence in Research for Australia’ would be introduced.36

Specific indictors of ‘research activity and intensity’, ‘research

quality’, and ‘success in applied research and translation of

research outcomes’ are being developed for each of eight discipline

clusters.37 It is timely to argue for the importance of including



community reports, and other knowledge translation activities that

engage communities, as possible indicators of success within all

ERA discipline clusters where CPR is conducted, and particularly

within the Public and Allied Health and Health Services cluster.

Since February 2009 the Economic and Social Research Council

(ESRC) in the UK has highlighted the importance of research

impact in making funding decisions. The ESRC views research

impact broadly, arguing that it ‘can take many forms, become

manifest at different stages in the research life-cycle and beyond,

and be promoted in many different ways’.38 CPR projects appear to

offer diverse benefits for communities, albeit that these benefits are

difficult to predict and quantify. As a predominantly metrics-based

system, the ERA focuses on counting and assessing the quality of

recognised publications. Academic assessment mechanisms which

recognise research impact broadly (such as the ESRC) are likely

to capture outcomes of CPR more effectively than those (such as

the ERA) which do not.

Dedicated Australian funding for CPR

Both funding and grant assessment procedures may need to

be adapted to ensure a fair evaluation for CPR projects. Some

commentators propose that community members should be

included as reviewers on grant applications for collaborative

research9 or on funding decision-making bodies.39 Others have

argued that funding bodies should report how many successful

grants incorporate community collaboration in order to track the

proportion of research funding going to support CPR,9 or that

community members without academic credentials should be

recognised by funding bodies as legitimate principal investigators

on research projects, and that funding should be made available

to train and mentor community members in grant writing and

research.5,9 Seifer and Green-Morton9 also propose that the usual

funding periods of two to five years are insufficient for research

involving community partners. They note that the American

National Institutes of Health National Center on Minority Health

and Health Disparities provides three-year planning grants,

f ive-year implementation grants and additional three-year

dissemination grants.

Participants in this project offered recommendations for

Australian research funding bodies. One researcher suggested

that NHMRC and Australian Research Council (ARC) submission

forms might include a section asking whether the project will

require additional funding for any particular reason due to

requirement for community engagement or the sensitivity of the

research environment. This could be used to justify requests for

funding to employ a CLO, to explain the need for payments for

participants or for longer than usual research time-frames.

ConclusionCommunity-university research partnerships present important

opportunities to involve disadvantaged communities in developing

strategies to address social and health inequalities. CPR approaches

promote the meaningful participation of communities in research,

and maximise the benefits and value of research for disadvantaged

and disenfranchised communities and populations. An extensive

and committed scholarship explores and documents the value

of CPR approaches but key tenets remain difficult to adopt as

usual research practice in public health research. This paper has

drawn attention to some of the impediments to its practice that

are linked to the academic settings in which much research is

undertaken. Community-university partnerships are likely to be

further strained in environments of scarce research funding.40 In

this context, as Winter and colleagues20 have observed, ‘there

is a risk that the educational, social and economic benefits of

community engagement will be undermined by higher education

policies which emphasis competitiveness, commercialisation and

cutbacks.’

This paper draws on a small Melbourne-based exploratory study.

Despite the challenges, the findings suggest ways in that CPR

approaches are practised in everyday public health research. A

wider audit of CPR in Australian universities, involving not only

researchers and the communities with whom we work, but also

managers of university research and representatives of funding

bodies, would determine the resources and policies required to

maximise the social and health benefits of this approach.

Acknowledgements The project was funded by a small grant from The University of

Melbourne’s Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences,

with additional funding from the McCaughey Centre: VicHealth

Centre for the Promotion of Mental Health and Community

Wellbeing. The paper draws on a project report published by the

McCaughey Centre at the University of Melbourne.1 Dr Warr and

Dr Pyett were supported by VicHealth Public Health Fellowships.

We would like to thank the all the interview participants for

their generosity in sharing experiences of research collaboration

with us and the anonymous reviewer for his or her constructive

engagement with the paper.

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Was it good for you too? Impediments to conducting university-based collaborative research with communities experiencing disadvantage