Community Based Participatory Research

CSAAH’s research, training, and partnership development activities are guided by the principles of community based participatory research (CBPR).

Unlike “traditional” health research, CBPR calls for the active and equal partnership of community stakeholders throughout the research process, including selecting health concerns and research questions, determining study design, recruiting participants, designing instruments, implementing research/interventions, and disseminating findings.

Several principles are fundamental to CBPR.  Specifically, CBPR:

• promotes active collaboration and participation at every stage of research;
• facilitates co-learning;
• ensures research/interventions are community-driven;
• disseminates results in useful ways for community stakeholders;
• ensures research and intervention strategies are culturally appropriate; and
• defines community as a unit of identity.   If done well, CBPR can yield benefits simultaneously for communities and researchers.  

 CBPR has many benefits:

• CBPR fosters trusting relationships between researchers and communities;
• CBPR promotes increased relevance of research questions;
• CBPR enhances quantity and quality of collected data;
• CBPR enhances use and relevance of collected data;
• CBPR promotes dissemination of findings; and
• CBPR facilitates infrastructure building and sustainability (Israel, Schulz, Parker, & Becker, 1998).  

To learn more about how CSAAH utilizes CBPR principles to guide our work, click here