Evaluating community-based research: Hearing the views of student research partners

Siobhán O'Sullivan,Mark Cullinane

doi:10.15173/ijsap.v4i2.4203

Siobhán O'Sullivan, Mark Cullinane

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.15173/ijsap.v4i2.4203

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Abstract

Despite the increasing popularity in the academy of collaborative approaches to research, evaluating the impacts of Students-as-Partners (SaP) initiatives has thus far received less systematic attention. This paper presents an evaluation of a participatory community-based research project where academics partnered with 15 mature students in a socio-economically disadvantaged estate in the south of Ireland to co-construct a household survey and conduct field research to gather the views of fellow residents on the regeneration of their area. The paper reports the findings of a subsequent qualitative, participatory evaluation of the student’s experience of this partnership with academics and its impacts. The findings illuminate some of the benefits and challenges of community-based staff-student research partnerships and points to the imperatives of aligning institutional, funder, and community participants’ capacities and objectives throughout the research cycle and the importance of evaluation to inform good practice in community-based research.

Highlights

Background to the research partnershipIn 2014, Cork City Council commissioned the School of Applied Social Studies in University College Cork (UCC) to evaluate the implementation of the Cork City NorthwestCullinane, M. & O’Sullivan, S. (2020)
The main findings of the interviews—anonymised using pseudonyms—are reported and discussed below. These are structured according to the main interview discussion topics, which explored with student partners their initial motivations for getting involved with the project and expectations around it, the ways they felt they influenced the design of the research and its implementation, and how they viewed the experience of partnership with the academic staff
Eleanor reported that the group agreed to get involved as they collectively saw the value to the research of their knowledge of the community, explaining that “because we knew each other, we knew the places, . . . we knew because most of us were from the area, that it would’ve been easier for us to do it as opposed to strangers coming into the area.”

Summary

Introduction

Background to the research partnershipIn 2014, Cork City Council commissioned the School of Applied Social Studies in University College Cork (UCC) to evaluate the implementation of the Cork City NorthwestCullinane, M. & O’Sullivan, S. (2020).

Results

Conclusion