I'll be teaching a course on research methods in community psychology in the spring, and I'm wondering if you have a set of resources that might work as a "textbook" for such a course (or if you know of someone who's done this). Many thanks.
Cheers,
Bill Flack
Psychology Dept
Bucknell University
Lewisburg PA
Hi Bill,
Welcome to the Community Tool Box (CTB) and Ask an Advisor, we’re very glad you chose to visit us and for your most excellent question. Truth be told Bill, this is not a question advisors get very often, if at all, so I’m glad to point you to some of our great CTB resources as well as resources from outside the CTB. As a social science research methodologist, evaluator, and adjunct professor who works through a lens of community psychology your question really resonates and allows me to flex my research chops a bit, so thank you for that.
Okay, as you likely already know community psychology values participation, social justice, diversity collaboration, empowerment, and an action orientation in all research and evaluation pursuits so that’s the best place to start when teaching research methods, these are the values you want to inculcate in your students. Anyone can teach basic social science research methods, but in community psychology we do so with a bit more finesse and sensitivity to the often fragile human condition. As you also know, community psychology grounds all advocacy and social justice action in empiricism which is what separates community psychology from a social movement or grassroots organization. Methods from the social sciences have been adapted for use in the field, acknowledging value-driven, subjective research involving community members. The methods used in community psychology are both quantitative as well as qualitative along with other innovative methods pulled from anthropology, ethnography, forensics, and the like. I would suggest, because community psychology places a strong emphasis on evaluation, beyond methods, that you include evaluation in your curriculum. Enough of my proselytizing, (sorry about that) on with the resources!
Although I’m not sure to whom you’re teaching research methods and by extension, evaluation – undergrad or graduate - the first three suggestions I have are compendiums that actually come from outside of the CTB and are pretty much standards in the field; you can draw from them or use them in the whole. By the way, you can never go wrong with any book authored or co-authored by Lenny Jason at DePaul University who is a luminary in the community psychology field:
Tolan, P., Keys, C., Chertok, F., & Jason, L. (Eds.). (1990). Researching community psychology: Issues of theories and methods. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. http://www.apa.org/pubs/books/4318031.aspx http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1990-98742-000/
Jason, L.A., Keys, C.B., Suarez-Balcazar, Y., Taylor, R.R., Davis, M., Durlak, J., Isenberg, D. (2004). (Eds.). Participatory community research: Theories and methods in action. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association. http://www.apa.org/pubs/books/4318003.aspx
Jason, L.A., & Glenwick, D.S. (Eds.) (2012). Methodological Approaches to Community-Based Research. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. http://www.apa.org/pubs/books/4316136.aspx.
Okay, Bill, let’s look at what the CTB has to offer. There are four chapters from which to draw the teaching resources you’re looking for, located in the CTB section on evaluating community programs and initiatives. In Chapter 36 – Introduction to Evaluation: (https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/evaluate/evaluation) pay particular attention to Section 2 – Community-Based Participatory Research (https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/evaluate/evaluation/intervention-research/main) which includes a lot of potentially useful resources at the end of the section, and Section 6 – Participatory Evaluation (https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/evaluate/evaluation/participatory-evaluation/main), which, likewise has a treasure-trove of resources upon which to draw. I think that from a pure research methods perspective, Chapter 36’s two sections plus the print resources from outside the CTB I provided should actually be more than enough to get you started. However....
As I hope you will and strongly suggest, you are going to teach evaluation, which is part of all community psychology curricula, alongside research methods then do look at Chapter 37 – Operations in Evaluating Community Interventions: (https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/evaluate/evaluate-community-interventions), all 7 sections offer a great primer on the evaluation enterprise. Taking it one step further, Chapter 38 – Some Methods for Evaluating Comprehensive Community Initiatives: (https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/evaluate/evaluate-community-initiatives) will provide you with evaluation-specific methods to go along with the other resources on participatory methods above. Knowing how to conduct research and evaluations, however, is not sufficient unless you apply the knowledge so accrued for the sake of programmatic improvement. Chapter 39 – Using Evaluation to Understand and Improve the Initiative (https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/evaluate/evaluation-to-understand-and-improve) will show you how to do just that. Research and evaluation in a vacuum is simply called basic research, important for theory-building, but not very useful in on-the ground community psychology.
So, Bill, I think you have everything you need to teach a bang-up community psychology research methods and evaluation course. If what I provided you is insufficient do visit the CTB again and we’ll put our heads together to find you exactly what you need. On behalf of the CTB, best of success in all your endeavors.
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