Community Defined Measures of Success and Inclusive Research in Peacebuilding

Abstract

Participatory research is a tool for community inclusion in peace and development programs. Participation is a popularly promoted concept, but rarely implemented in research. Search for Common Ground (Search), an international peacebuilding NGO, reflects in this paper on four past projects to assess if and how participatory research brings an added value to peacebuilding programming. The projects were selected from across Africa, and each applied one of the following participatory research methods: Youth Led Research, Outcome Harvesting, and an adapted Social Network Analysis. The findings are based on a literature review, review of M&E planning, monitoring, and final evaluation of each of the four projects, and seven semi‐structured Key Informant Interviews (KIIs) with M&E and Project Management staff. Our research questions were, Do participatory research processes change metrics of success? How is success understood under these processes? What lessons can be drawn from these processes? and, Which best practices emerge that differ from what already exists? Traditional research, where community members are research subjects instead of partners, limits the perspectives that feed the bodies of knowledge influencing program design and definitions of success. Participatory research creates opportunities to track minority voices, which the inclusion of and responses to fundamentally change programs' definitions of success. A primary value of participatory research is in how it escapes the rigidity of formal processes, which are often donor‐driven and not responsive to changing needs on the ground. The examined project in West Africa has project indicators that intentionally respond to youth researchers' findings on worst forms of violence in their community. The resulting definitions came directly from the targeted community, and were unique from any indicators that program staff would have developed (one example: including consistent hunger as a form of violence). Another added value of participation in research is the increases in sustained community involvement in other aspects of programming. Sustained involvement may also include increased engagement with other institutions, such as local government; the effect is even more powerful when projects explicitly build the use of participatory research into the project objectives. Participation is also recognized as valuable in itself. Participatory research creates opportunities to track minority voices, the inclusion of which and responses to fundamentally change definitions of success. A key lesson learned is that the success and growth of participatory research requires a receptive donor or institutional environment. This area should continue to be explored, to determine how community‐based research can be used to advocate for high‐level change. Theories of Change (TOCs) are identified as a potential path for promoting adaptive learning and participatory research. Tracking the changes to the TOC and the corresponding changes to a project over time create space for new definitions of project success that value adaptability and real‐time relevance, beyond the rigidity and limits of donor‐imposed learning systems. Finally, what makes this approach unique from current common practice is its shift to reconsider who can speak with authority on issues relevant to peacebuilding research. The consequent adaptive learning better respond to the unique position of peacebuilding research as a set of tools applied in inherently uncertain and complex contexts.