Community-Based Research

“Bringing the university and the community into effective learning and mutual contribution is one of our country’s greatest needs. This book provides both breadth and depth in CBR and gives insights into the future direction of moving service-learning into community enhancement.”

Rev. Dr. Carmen Porco, CEO, Housing Ministries of American Baptists in Wisconsin; and President - Porco Consulting

“We highly recommend Beckman and Long’s Community-Based Research: Teaching for Community Impact, both to those who are new to CBR as an engaged learning strategy and to experienced practitioners who are seeking fresh ideas. The pairing of two concise theoretical frameworks for planning and conducting CBR projects—the community impact framework and the POWER model—with several case studies involving different settings, diverse issues, and various pedagogical models achieves two important objectives. First, it gives readers a strong sense of the potential power of CBR as an engaged learning strategy that is capable of simultaneously enriching the student learning experience and producing meaningful benefits for community partners. Second, it gives readers sufficient grounding in the realities of CBR as an engaged learning strategy to make informed choices about how to design their own efforts.”

Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement

"Community-Based Research would be a good book for faculty members interested in designing CBR projects with students to enhance their learning and help them make connections between theory and practice. It could also help them connect the meta and lived narratives circulating in the literature and public spaces. As Long acknowledges, 'there is still much more work to be done in documenting student outcomes linked to CBR', but this book contributes to this ongoing research. The text is particularly effective in the way it accounts for the unique roles students have played in CBR (e.g., as a change agent, active citizen, allied community member, and co-author). This book would also be a valuable resource for community members, students, and faculty members who want to work in solidarity with one another to strengthen the communities they share. It would also improve the lived conditions of one another and their neighbors both locally and globally."

- Teachers College Record

“Beckman and Long provide the reader with a wide range of case studies that demonstrate how community-based learning [CBR] can impact the community for good. They distill useful lessons and principles to guide the development of partnerships that organize collaborative research work in ways that demonstrably impact the community to bring about changes that promote social justice. This book fills a gap in the development of the CBR field while simultaneously equipping CBR partners to engage in meaningful, transformative work.”

Sam Marullo, Professor of Sociology and Director of Wesley Theological Seminary’s Institute for Community Engagement; former Professor and Chair of Sociology and Senior Research Fellow - Sam Marullo, Professor of Sociology and Director of Wesley Theological Seminary’s Institute for Comm

“This volume is an outcome of a federal grant designed to support and expand the practice of high-quality community-based research in colleges and universities across the United States. This book shows how it is possible to emphasize both student learning and community impact. The principles of community-based research are grounded in practical examples from a variety of disciplines; the range of models and disciplines should spark new ideas for courses and long-term community collaborations.”

Trisha Thorme, Director, Community-Based Learning Initiative (CBLI), Princeton University; and Coleader - Corporation for National and Community Service Grant "National Community-Based Research Networking"

"Never before have the opportunities for campus-community research partnerships been so abundant and diverse. Hospitals, social service agencies, juvenile corrections, education, and health services are just a few of the community-based organizations wanting to measure the validity of their work through outputs, outcomes, and impact. However, these organizations do not usually have staff with the skill-set to develop meaningful research. For years, community-benefit investment was measured by process indicators, such as program attendance, or satisfaction surveys. Speaking from the community, we did not know how to begin, nor have the scientific discipline to reach decision-making indicators, which would lead to change and ultimately, to constructive change over-time.

Community-Based Research: Teaching for Community Impact is like an operation manual to move from the publish-or-perish doctrine to conducting real-world research, which can make significant differences to where you work, live, and play. CBR can be a powerful conduit to improving the well-being of the community, while simultaneously educating all the various individuals engaged in the resolution of an issue or problem. Collaboration, communication, synergism, innovation, respect, and transparency are identified as key components for transformative change on a large scale. The authors drill to the epicenter of identifying targets for change, decisions being made, and moves outward to the valid measurement for long-term, sustainable change within the community.”

Margo DeMont, PhD, Executive Director - Community Health Enhancement, Memorial Hospital of South Bend, Indiana

“Community-based research changes lives. This book can transform the way you teach and do research and the impact your work has on students and communities near and far.”

Daniel Lende, Associate Professor of Anthropology - University of South Florida

“Skillfully organized, thoroughly researched, and clearly written, Beckman and Long have succeeded in assembling a collection of expert scholar-practitioners, each of whom provides evidence and practical advice for planning and conducting community-based research [CBR]. . . . A timely, refreshing, and major contribution to the existing literature on CBR, this book will stimulate and guide professors, students, community partners, and other professionals working in university and community settings.”

Nicholas Cutforth, Professor, Morgridge College of Education - University of Denver

“This volume makes an important contribution to the growing literature on community-based research. With its focus on teaching and practice of CBR, this book is a needed resource for scholars and practitioners around the world who are building capacities for impactful research contributing to societal changes. Many interesting case studies make this volume engaging and real.”

Joanna Ochocka, Executive Director, Centre for Community-Based Research; Associate Professor Adjunct - University of Waterloo; and Vice-Chair, Community Based Research Canada

“In an environment in which some governors insist a college’s worth should be measured only by the number of graduates getting high-paying, high-demand jobs, this book reminds us that many students achieve a different kind of education: one that cultivates an ethos of investigative care about solving problems faced by the very communities in which they live and will work. That’s the kind of education that really prepares graduates to be the workers our country needs: competent, collaborative, solutions-oriented, and invested in the greater good.”

Caryn McTighe Musil, Senior Scholar and Director of Civic Learning and Democracy’s Initiatives - Association of American Colleges and Universities

Figures and Tables

Foreword
Timothy K. Eatman

Acknowledgments

Introduction
Mary Beckman and Joyce F. Long

PART ONE: DEFINITIONS, ORIENTING FRAMEWORKS, AND PARTNERS
Mary Beckman

1. The Language and Methods Of Community Research
James M. Frabutt and Kelly N. Graves

2. The Role of Community-Based Research in Achieving Community Impact
Mary Beckman and Danielle Wood
3. Community-Based Research From the Perspective of the Community Partners
Jessica Quaranto and Debra Stanley

4. Why Teach Community-Based Research?
A Story of Developing Faculty Interest
Joyce F. Long, Paul Schadewald, and Brooke Kiener

PART TWO: GUIDING COMMUNITY-BASED RESEARCH TOWARD COMMUNITY OUTCOMES AND STUDENT LEARNING
Joyce F. Long

5. The Power Model
Five Core Elements for Teaching Community-Based Research
Jennifer M. Pigza

6. Applying the Power Model in a Second-Language Class
Rachel Parroquin with Emily Geiger-Medina

7. Multicampus Partnerships Studying the Feasibility of Buying Local
Christopher S. Ruebeck

8. Meeting The Objectives Of Faculty Engagement In Undergraduate Community-Based Research Projects
Anna Sims Bartel and Georgia Nigro

9. Mathematical Modeling + A Community Partner = the Fulfillment of Student Learning Objectives
Ethan Berkove

10. Strategic Training Goals
Preparing Graduate Students to Conduct School-Based Action Research
Anthony C. Holter and James M. Frabutt

11. Working Through the Challenges of Globally Engaged Research
Elizabeth Tryon and Norbert Steinhaus

12. Deepening Levels of Engagement
What Works, What Doesn’t, and the Important Role of a Community-Based Research Center
Judith Owens-Manley

13. Engagement With the Common Good
Curriculum and Evaluation of a Long-Term Commitment
Amy Lee Persichetti, Beth Sturman, and Jeff Gingerich

14. Reflections on a Graduate Student’s Dissertation Experience Using Community Data for Research and Mentoring
Jody Nicholson

PART THREE: COMMUNITY-BASED RESEARCH IN COMMUNITY-WIDE LONG-TERM EFFORTS
Mary Beckman

15. The Poverty Initiative in Rockbridge County, Virginia
Don E. Dailey and David Dax

16. Learning to Co-Construct Solutions to Urban School Challenges in Los Angeles
Adrianna Kezar and Sylvia Rousseau

17. Community-Based Research and Development in Haiti
Leveraging Multiple Resources for Maximum Impact
Anthony Vinciguerra

18. Progressive Projects on Parent Involvement
Joyce F. Long

Conclusion
Themes, Challenges, and Thoughts About the Future
Mary Beckman

Editors and Contributors

Index

Mary Beckman

Mary Beckman is the Associate Director for Academic Affairs and Research at the Center for Social Concerns, University of Notre Dame. Her publications can be found in journals including Journal on Excellence in College Teaching, Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement, Review of Radical Political Economics, Women's Studies Quarterly, and in books, for example, Handbook of Engaged Scholarship: The Contemporary Landscape Volume Two (2010) and Teaching the “isms”: Feminist pedagogy across the disciplines (2010).

Joyce F. Long

Joyce F. Long is a research analyst in Memorial Hospital-South Bend’s Community Health Enhancement Department.