Social Psychology Special Issue

Hints and Tips:
Undertaking community-based research
Michael Walton
Stepping out of the laboratory and into the community can be both daunting and exciting. This article outlines
some methods that can be helpful in overcoming some of the challenges, and making the most of community
research. Here I outline some hints and tips for researchers in relation to getting to know the community;
community participation; employing multiple and mixed methodology; creativity and researcher reflexivity.
Community research: Opportunities and challenges
COMMUNITY PSYCHOLOGY considers
health within its social and political
context, with particular emphasis on
researchers working towards creating beneficial
social and community change (Murray et
al., 2004). Through working with communities,
researchers can develop partnerships
which can have a number of benefits, for
instance; partners can advise whether
research methods are likely to work in the
community, help with recruitment, and
provide opportunities to apply the research.
Community research, however, is not without
challenges. Some examples include establishing
partnerships, gaining access to participants,
and negotiating complex issues
around whom the research is for and who will
benefit from it.
Currently I am two-thirds of the way
through my PhD, which explores how people
cope with adversity by using local ‘places’. This
article outlines some techniques I have found
helpful when conducting community research.
Here, it is important to note that when doing
community research at a doctoral level, the
importance of great supervisors can never be
understated. My supervisory team have experience
in community research and connections
within the services that I am working with,
without which this research would be a greater
challenge. I will now outline some hints and
tips in relation to; getting to know the community,
community participation, employing
multiple and mixed methodology, creativity
and reflexivity as a researcher.
1. Getting to know the community
For a number of reasons, it is important to
firstly get to know the community you will be
working with. Finding out about local needs
and interests can inform the aims of research.
You can also identify sites to conduct the
research in, and find out which type of
research is likely to work (i.e. will people actually
fill out questionnaires or will interviews be
more successful?). Getting to know the
community can be a two-way process, as you
also want to give communities the opportunity
to get to know you. This can build trust,
which can be very important, especially when
asking for access to participants.
There are number of different techniques
which can be employed to get to
know a community, such as attending
community events, using participant observation
(see Reflexivity for a discussion on
field notes), community audits (a project
which develops a report of a community),
and community walks (Kagan et al., 2011).
Discussions with people who are important
in community life (i.e. counsellors and directors
of local organisations) can also be rich
sources of information. Secondary sources of
information can also be useful, such as
websites, policy documents, and reports
produced by local services.
At the beginning of my research, I identified
opportunities for partnerships by using
community mapping to explore the services
that were available locally. Mapping has a
history in social geography and is often used
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