In whose interest? Participatory research approaches and the (missing?) evidence for the promised social change

With this paper I would like to encourage a discourse and reflection on collaborative participatory research approaches and how they have, or have not, fulfilled the promise of social change.

The ECQI conference call states that ‘participatory research designs have traditionally been associated with emancipatory, democratic, and empowering aims, and as such, they have been mobilised to involve marginalised groups in knowledge production’. The conference call also reminds us of the recent growth in inclusive and innovative approaches in a range of fields, largely, but not exclusively in the social sciences and humanities, and it notes how these set us apart from fields where positivist thinking prevails.

When they emerged in the early 1970s, participatory and collaborative research approaches came, indeed, partially about because of the frustration with positivist-informed research methods that failed to achieve the promised social change and improvement in the lives of disenfranchised and disadvantaged people and communities. Five decades later, participatory and collaborative approaches are all but mainstream. There is a wealth of diverse engaging cutting-edge approaches to undertaking (social) research with rather than on participants and their communities.I argue that it is time for a self-reflective assessment of what these research approaches have really achieved regarding their ambition to better positivistic approaches about what tangible and long-term difference they make to the lives of people in these communities. I will consider if researchers involved in participatory and collaborative research studies ought to be more self-reflective about whose interests they serve, and whether we ought to be more ambitious in our research aims.