COUV ACTES - Psychologie communautaire

Community Psychology: Common Values, Diverse PracticesGearing Up: a participatory project exploring cycling in Yorkby Jacqui Akhurst 1 , Stephanie Meysner 1 & Alan Dunnett 1ContextThe UK city of York is one of 12 towns awarded ‘Cycling city’ status in 2008, leading to a £1 million grant to thecity council. York has amongst the highest number of cyclists per capita in the UK, so a research group of cyclistsemployed at YSJU decided to use participatory research to begin an investigation into the contribution of cyclingto the building of healthy communities. A multidisciplinary research group comprising six cyclists (of varyingability) from five disciplines was awarded some funding to undertake a pilot study, with the hope of being able toapply for external funding to continue the work, if successful.It was decided that our engagement in various forms of cycling would be the ‘vehicle’ for the research: as a wayof meeting other cyclists (of differing abilities and interests, from different communities in the city), a means ofdata collection (through various narrative data collection methods), and to engage in activism (hoping to use thefindings of our study to lobby for cyclists and cycling in the city). Multiple approaches to data collection werechosen by group members, and this paper aims to explore an example of the use of ‘photo-voice’ methodology,the results of an online survey to YSJU staff members and interviews with willing volunteers.Before presenting the findings from the above research, it is important to outline the tensions inherent in theresearch process, over the time period of six months.The Participatory Action research (PAR) process is, due to its very nature, responsive to the contributions andconstraints of workload and life challenges of the participants. In the case of the research aims and objectives, avariety of unexpected work-related problems arose due to the financial crisis and contraction in university funding.This let to the retrenchment of one of the central researchers in the project after only a few months, and otherstaff members had to take on additional work responsibilities. In addition, the research assistant was unable toaccess continuation of funds for her studies, and had to withdraw earlier than expected. Our intentions in planningthe study were therefore different from the more modest outputs that resulted.A second set of challenges related to the experiences of collecting data through the creative data collectionmethods we had planned. These related to the ethics of taking photographs or video footage of cyclists, whilst onthe move, yet needing to gain informed consent, and ensuring that no participant felt coerced into taking part. Wegained overall ethical approval for the study from the university ethics committee; however the more generalethical approval did not cover all the nuances of using progressive technology. These experiences highlighted the1York St John University, York, UK.235