| name | design-a-community-based-research-project |
| category | school |
| description | Design community-based research with shared questions, authority, benefit, consent, data governance, compensation, interpretation, and exit. Use when research concerns a community that should shape how knowledge is produced and used. |
design-a-community-based-research-project
Participation must carry real authority and benefit, not decorative consultation.
When to use
- Use when community knowledge, impact, access, trust, or governance is central.
- Do not treat one organization or visible spokesperson as consent for a whole community.
Preconditions
- Identify communities, internal diversity, history, harms, partners, funders, institutions, languages, accessibility, and ethics routes.
Procedure
- Begin with listening and document who wants the work, who may be harmed, and who is missing.
- Co-define questions, non-goals, benefits, risks, decision rights, stop authority, and success.
- Agree roles, compensation, capacity support, authorship, intellectual property, procurement, and dispute resolution.
- Design consent, safeguarding, privacy, withdrawal, data ownership, access, locality, retention, and destruction.
- Select methods with accessible and culturally appropriate participation routes.
- Establish joint interpretation without granting any party authority to falsify findings.
- Agree review, release, sensitive-result handling, community return, correction, and reuse.
- Monitor burden, benefit, power, representation, and commitments through closeout.
Failure plan
- If consent or community authority fractures, pause affected work and renegotiate rather than recruit around dissent.
- If findings create imminent harm, activate the agreed safeguarding and release process.
Worked example
Residents and researchers co-govern an air-quality study, fund local participation, keep location data controlled, and publish both results and unresolved disagreements.
Done
- A community-research plan records questions, representation, authority, compensation, consent, data, methods, interpretation, release, benefit, and exit
- Partner, ethics, privacy, accessibility, burden, dissent, commitment, correction, and community-return checks verify accountable design
