Research methods and the empowerment social agenda.

Abstract

and, especially, Marc Zirnmerman for comments on an earlier version.'There is probably too much jargon in this agenda statement. I am often asked what do I really mean by empowerment? I admit to a certain lack of precision in the term. For example, one might be asked to define things like confexf, influence, and decisions. And it would be helpful to specify just what is meant by a phrase such as u$ect their lives. Nevertheless, despite the difficulty of specification I have discovered that it is not very difficult for the people who are the target of our research or our interventions to understand what it means. Empowerment has also been written about by political scientists, journalists, and poets (e.g., Boyte & Reissman, 1986; Neruda, 1987).*Of course, this does not mean that outsiders should be the only people studied. One may learn quite a bit by studying those who are empowered "insiders" and by studying settings that are empowering (Maton, 1989; Maton & Rappaport, 1984) as well as people who have become empowered (Kieffer, 1984). There are also certain uses that, although not totally congruent with the intention to retain the term empowerment for issues concerned with outsiders, do not distort its meaning and from which we probably can learn a great deal-for example, empowering teachers or parents in the school context (see Gruber & Trickett, 1987).

Le rôle des femmes dans la vie de jeunes pères vivant en contexte de vulnérabilité

“…Cette recherche adopte une approche qualitative postulant que les personnes sont les mieux placées pour donner un sens à leurs expériences (Rappaport, 1990). Les participants ont été recrutés par l'entremise de trois entreprises d'insertion.…”

De l’« habilitation » au « pouvoir d’agir » : vers une appréhension plus circonscrite de la notion d’empowerment1

“…En fait, il apparaît que les impacts du développement du pouvoir d'agir sont intimement liés à la nature du changement visé (Maton et Salem, 1995 ;Zimmerman, 1995Zimmerman, , 1990Rappaport, 1990Rappaport, , 1987Swift et Levin, 1987). Pour cette raison, toute intervention qui vise l'empowerment des personnes et des collectivités doit reposer sur une prise en compte systématique de son contexte d'application tant dans la définition de ses objectifs que dans ses méthodes (Wallerstein et Bernstein, 1994).…”

The Capabilities Questionnaire for the Community Mental Health Context (CQ-CMH): A measure inspired by the capabilities approach and constructed through consumer–researcher collaboration.

“…Beyond this, formal opportunities for learning and discussion were provided (Ochocka et al, 2002): a formal training session about the capabilities theory was developed, presenting a new perspective for assessing the quality of life, and the total of 32 meetings of the SC allowed the exchange of views and skills, and a process of mutual influence (Rappaport, 1990). Moreover, the collaborative work strengthened individual abilities that were not obvious even to the participants, and that may be useful in the future (Trickett & Espino, 2004).…”