ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the concepts of empowerment evaluation and participatory action research methods within the context of a community health education initiative developed and implemented by a grassroots organization established to respond to the needs of low-income Central American and Mexican immigrants in the Pico Union and Westlake areas of Los Angeles. Empowerment evaluation relies on evaluation concepts, methods, and findings to promote program improvements and foster self-determination among program participants (Fetterman, 2001). The emphasis is on capacity-building and democratic processes that aim to “legitimize community members’ experiential knowledge, acknowledge the role of values in research, empower community members, democratize research inquiry, and enhance the relevance of evaluation data for communities” (Fawcett et al., 1996, p. 162). Participatory action research (PAR) has similar capacity-building and empowerment goals. In the PAR model, members of the community and/or organization working with a community select the topic to be explored, design the methods to be used to collect the data, gather the information, and analyze the results, either alone or within collaborative research partnerships with academics (Stoecker, 1998; Nyden et al., 1997).
