Researching with Peer/Community Researchers Ambivalences and Tensions

Edwards, Rosalind; Alexander, Claire

doi:10.4135/9781446268261.n17

Cited by 28 publications

(42 citation statements)

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“…Another concern is that researchers may unquestionably accept all that insiders represent, since being critical of peer experience and knowledge may be equivalent to denial of their realities (Nind, 2014). Edwards and Alexander (2011) argue that peers may want to present an overly positive image of their community. They may feel compelled to manage how a community facing stigma is represented to other members of the research team either through whom they choose to recruit or how they interact with participants during interviews.…”

Section: Peer-interviewingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They may feel compelled to manage how a community facing stigma is represented to other members of the research team either through whom they choose to recruit or how they interact with participants during interviews. Peerinterviewers may be viewed by their community as 'similar but different'; similar because they have lived experience, yet different from them in their role as interviewer (Edwards and Alexander, 2011).…”

Section: Peer-interviewingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The method has been used in research with sex workers (Benoit et al, 2005), people living with HIV/AIDS (Greene et al, 2009), refugees, homeless young people (Couch et al, 2014), lone mothers, children and people with disabilities (Edwards and Alexander, 2011). Proponents of this approach argue that it provides tangible benefits for peer-interviewers -such as skills development and improved self-esteem.…”

Section: Peer-interviewingmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Enriching qualitative research by engaging peer interviewers: a case study

Devotta

Woodhall-Melnik

Pedersen

et al. 2016

Qualitative Research

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Engaging peer-interviewers in qualitative inquiry is becoming more popular. Yet, there are differing opinions as to whether this practice improves the research process or is prohibitively challenging. Benefits noted in the literature are improved awareness/acceptance of disenfranchised groups, improved quality of research, and increased comfort of participants in the research process. Challenges include larger investment in time and money to hire, train, and support peerinterviewers, and the potential to disrupt peer recovery. We illustrate, through case study, how to engage peer-interviewers, meet potential challenges, and the benefits of such engagement. We draw upon our experience from a qualitative study designed to understand men's experiences of problem gambling and housing instability. We hired three peers to conduct semi-structured qualitative interviews with 30 men from a community-based organization. We contend, that with appropriate and adequate resources (time, financial investment), peer-interviewing produces a positive, capacity building experience for peer-interviewers, participants and researchers.

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Section: Peer-interviewingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Peer-interviewingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Peer-interviewingmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Enriching qualitative research by engaging peer interviewers: a case study

Devotta

Woodhall-Melnik

Pedersen

et al. 2016

Qualitative Research

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Edwards and Alexander (2011) are less sanguine about the prospects of community/peer researchers, arguing that calls for democratised research in the form of peer/community researchers often masks instrumental concerns about access to respondents and labour management, where claims to empowerment and learning are secondary to completing research tasks in an increasingly demanding neoliberal university environment.…”

Section: Community-university Partnerships and Transformative Learninmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In particular, several studies focus on the challenging role of community researchers and the potential for their experiences to be productive and empowering, or not (Edwards & Alexander 2011;Greene et al 2009;Kilpatrick et al 2007;Warr, Mann & Tacticos 2010). These studies focus on the role of community/peer researchers in community-based research studies, documenting both scepticism and, at times, empowerment, despite the challenges on the ground.…”

Section: Community-university Partnerships and Transformative Learninmentioning

confidence: 99%

Challenging the empowerment expectation: Learning, alienation and design possibilities in community-university research

Curnow

2017

Gateways

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As community-university partnerships have become mainstream, researchers have argued that these approaches have the potential to be transformative, supporting community learning and creating capacity for community development. While this remains the dominant narrative of community research, some researchers have questioned the impacts of community research on frontline community, or peer, researchers who represent partnerships in their communities. These studies complicate the narrative, suggesting that learning and capacity building are not straightforward processes. While on the whole community-university partnerships tend to be empowering for community researchers, research is needed to understand the experiences of community researchers for whom this is not the case. My research examines a Toronto-based community-university participatory action research partnership, asking what community researchers learnt through their participation. I argue that, while community researchers learnt a great deal from their participation, the overall impact was not empowerment, but alienation. They did have their knowledge of community validated, and they built research skills, developed grievances through their conversations with neighbours and interrogated the links between grievances, all of which were important aspects of their participation. However, through the process they developed, or entrenched, a sense of powerlessness and dependence on the university researchers to take up their cause politically. This contradicts the aspirations of community-university partnership models, especially participatory action research, and raises questions about the inevitability of empowering social action stemming from these research projects. I argue that the disempowerment that the community researchers reported points to the need for community research to be embedded within existing social action organisations and infrastructure to provide clearer pathways to action because, without this, peer researchers may become overwhelmed by the scope of the grievances in their neighbourhoods and withdraw from, rather than embrace, the need for collective social action.

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Informalisation in Low‐wage Labour Markets: a Case Study of the UK Food Industry

Scott

2017

Population Space and Place

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Informalisation is a process that involves the lowering of the floor for pay and working conditions, sometimes legally and sometimes illegally, and it may occur in both formal and informal labour market settings. This paper examines what informalisation looks like in practice in the UK context. Drawing on the experiences of 62 low-wage migrant workers, employed in the UK food industry, the paper identifies five facets of 'informalisation', namely, job insecurity, work intensification, worker expendability, worker subordination, and employment intermediation. The identification of these five facets of informalisation is important in its own right. In addition, the UK case study also serves to emphasise the fact that the degradation of work is not something that is simply confined to the margins but is evident in the mainstream (beyond irregular workers and beyond the informal economy).

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Researching with Peer/Community Researchers Ambivalences and Tensions

Cited by 28 publications

References 0 publications

Enriching qualitative research by engaging peer interviewers: a case study

Enriching qualitative research by engaging peer interviewers: a case study

Challenging the empowerment expectation: Learning, alienation and design possibilities in community-university research

Informalisation in Low‐wage Labour Markets: a Case Study of the UK Food Industry

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