This article presents an experiential model for community-engaged research that understands communities as living meshworks of embodied human beings, material circumstances, and affective environments. We first trace how community organizations and academics must increasingly respond to a push for hard data. Using an analysis of a national research study on hunger as an example, we then show how this "data imperative" can lead to collecting more and more measurable data on community members without addressing their human-based concerns. The meshworks approach that we suggest emphasizes recognizing participants' most immediate needs as articulated by participants. As meshworks-inspired research has to be contingent and contextual within the meshworks of the community in which it takes place, we offer examples of what such research can look like in various community settings. Finally, we present a heuristic that community agencies and researchers can use to evaluate their own projects as meshworks while also gathering hard data.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.