ABSTRACT
Researchers use umbrella terms such as participatory action research, community-based participatory research, and feminist participatory action research. Participatory approaches offer possibilities for disenfranchised individuals to have voice in research design, data engagement, and outcomes, and may improve communities’ ability to address their own needs. Participatory frames for data engagement require compassionate, culturally centered research approaches and researchers’ ability (and willingness) to understand community values and priorities in order to include participants meaningfully in generating data about their own lives. Participatory approaches emphasize amplifying voices of community members, egalitarian collaboration with community allies, and increased emphasis on intersectionality as key aspects of analyzing community needs and possible responses. A wide variety of participatory data, which often fit also within arts-based research approaches, include artful and expressive forms such as photography, video, collage, poetry, narrative, sculpting, and (audio, video, or written) diaries. Participatory approaches make explicit the inherent connections between power and knowledge and are designed intentionally to produce active data that work toward social justice. In this chapter, we consider how participatory data disrupt and destabilize business-as-usual in academia in generative ways.
