design-a-community-based-research-project

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

1. Begin with listening and document who wants the work, who may be harmed, and who is missing.
2. Co-define questions, non-goals, benefits, risks, decision rights, stop authority, and success.
3. Agree roles, compensation, capacity support, authorship, intellectual property, procurement, and dispute resolution.
4. Design consent, safeguarding, privacy, withdrawal, data ownership, access, locality, retention, and destruction.
5. Select methods with accessible and culturally appropriate participation routes.
6. Establish joint interpretation without granting any party authority to falsify findings.
7. Agree review, release, sensitive-result handling, community return, correction, and reuse.
8. 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