Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques

How We Design Feasibility Studies

Community-based participatory research (CBPR) has emerged in the last decades as a transformative research paradigm that bridges the gap between science and practice through community engagement and social action to increase health equity. CBPR expands the potential for the translational sciences to develop, implement, and disseminate effective interventions across diverse communities through strategies to redress power imbalances; facilitate mutual benefit among community and academic partners; and promote reciprocal knowledge translation, incorporating community theories into the research. We identify the barriers and challenges within the intervention and implementation sciences, discuss how CBPR can address these challenges, provide an illustrative research example, and discuss next steps to advance the translational science of CBPR.

https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdf/10.2105/AJPH.2009.184036

Community-Based Participatory Research Contributions to Intervention Research: The Intersection of Science and Practice to Improve Health Equity

There is an instinctive drive among all humans to make meaning of their daily lives. Since there are no enduring truths, and change is continuous, we cannot always be assured of what we know or believe.

http://www.anitacrawley.net/Resources/Articles/Taylor.pdf

Transformative Learning Theory

Preparation for the role of therapist can occur on both professional and personal levels. Research has found that therapists are at risk for occupationally related psychological problems. It follows that self-care may be a useful complement to the professional training of future therapists. The present study examined the effects of one approach to self-care, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), for therapists in training. Using a prospective, cohort-controlled design, the study found participants in the MBSR program reported significant declines in stress, negative affect, rumination, state and trait anxiety, and significant increases in positive affect and self-compassion. Further, MBSR participation was associated with increases in mindfulness, and this enhancement was related to several of the beneficial effects of MBSR participation. Discussion highlights the potential for future research addressing the mental health needs of therapists and therapist trainees.

/pdf/teaching-self-care-to-caregivers-effects-of-mindfulness-2sfv2k7lcb.pdf

Teaching Self-Care to Caregivers: Effects of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction on the Mental Health of Therapists in Training

Although intervention research is vital to eliminating health disparities, many groups with health disparities have had negative research experiences, leading to an understandable distrust of researchers and the research process. Community-based participatory research (CBPR) approaches seek to reverse this pattern by building trust between community members and researchers. We highlight strategies for building and maintaining trust from an American Indian CBPR project and focus on 2 levels of trust building and maintaining: (1) between university and community partners and (2) between the initial project team and the larger community. This article was cowritten by community and academic partners; by offering the voices of community partners, it provides a novel and distinctive contribution to the CBPR literature.

Building and Maintaining Trust in a Community-Based Participatory Research Partnership

Unmanaged chronic stress can have deleterious effects on the physical and psychological health of individuals. Stress may lead to or worsen disorders and diseases such as heart disease, anxiety, depression, hypertension, substance abuse, and gastrointestinal disorders (Astin, 1997; Brennan & Moos, 1990; Levy, Cain, Jarrett, & Heitkemper, 1997; D. Shapiro & Goldstein, 1982; Treiber et al., 1993; Whitehead, 1992). Stress is also a contributing factor for lifestyle behaviors that increase vulnerability to diseases such as lung cancer, cardiovascular disease, and obesity (Brennan & Moos, 1990; Roth & Robbins, 2004; Treiber et al., 1993; D. R. Williams, 1999). Stress has an impact on absenteeism rates and job performance, effectiveness, and satisfaction (Burnard, Edwards, Fothergill, Hannigan, & Coyle, 2000). Given the prevalence of these stress-related health conditions in the United States, their costs to the nation's health care system, and the loss of quality of life for individuals, it is no surprise that public health professionals are increasingly concerned over the effects of stress. For instance, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2000) lists stress reduction as an objective in its publication Healthy People 2010. Health care workers are particularly vulnerable to stress overload because of high demands and unique challenges (Harris, 2001; Sharkey & Sharples, 2003; Wall et al., 1997). Burnout, defined as exhaustion of physical or emotional strength, is the most often-noted consequence of chronic stress in the workplace (Harris, 2001; Sharkey & Sharpies, 2003). Moore and Cooper (1996) found that mental health professionals experience emotional exhaustion alongside the usual organizational sources of stress, and Baker (2003) described the potential for "compassion fatigue" and "vicarious traumatization" (p. xi). These stressors may have harmful effects on counseling students' effectiveness and success by reducing their capacity for attention, concentration, and decision-making skills (S. Shapiro, Shapiro, & Schwartz, 2000). Educators have recognized the importance of providing counselors with tools for self-care early in their careers and even while they are being trained (Baker, 2003; Brems, 2001; Kuyken, Peters, Power, & Lavender, 2003; Weiss, 2004). In an extensive review of research on stress management in the education of health care professionals, S. Shapiro et al. (2000) stated that although many interventions demonstrated promising results, such as lower levels of anxiety and depression, greater capacity for empathy, and improved immunologic functioning, more research is needed. One of the most well-researched stress management programs is mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR). MBSR teaches mindfulness, which is the ability to attend to thoughts and emotions as they arise and to be fully conscious of the present-moment experience. Taught to more than 5,000 medical patients since its inception more than 20 years ago (Kabat-Zinn, 1990), MBSR is typically run as an 8-week course instructing mindfulness through the practice of meditation, body scan (a type of guided awareness), and hatha yoga. One of the strengths of MBSR, in contrast to most stress-reduction programs, is that it offers participants different mindfulness practices from which to choose. Research indicates that participants often find one of the three practices more beneficial or preferred for personal reasons; consequently, having options can improve compliance (Kabat-Zinn, Chapman, & Salmon, 1997). This may help to explain why MBSR has been found to have high compliance rates, even after 3 years (Kabat-Zinn & Chapman-Waldrop, 1988; Miller, Fletcher, & Kabat-Zinn, 1995). MBSR studies with varied populations have found significant decreases in anxiety/depression, mood disturbance, somatic symptoms of stress, and present-moment pain (Kabat-Zinn, Lipworth, & Burney, 1985; Kabat-Zinn et al. …

Mind-Body Medicine and the Art of Self-Care: Teaching Mindfulness to Counseling Students through Yoga, Meditation, and Qigong.

Indigenous communities have long experienced exploitation by researchers and increasingly require participatory and decolonizing research processes. We present a case study of an intervention research project to exemplify a clash between Western research methodologies and Indigenous methodologies and how we attempted reconciliation. We then provide implications for future research based on lessons learned from Native American community partners who voiced concern over methods of Western deductive qualitative analysis. Decolonizing research requires constant reflective attention and action, and there is an absence of published guidance for this process. Continued exploration is needed for implementing Indigenous methods alone or in conjunction with appropriate Western methods when conducting research in Indigenous communities. Currently, examples of Indigenous methods and theories are not widely available in academic texts or published articles, and are often not perceived as valid.

Adapting Western research methods to indigenous ways of knowing.

This paper addresses two questions regarding the use of Community-based Participatory Research (CBPR) approaches with tribal communities. First, how do "gold standard" CBPR principles hold up when applied to Native American communities and what additional contextual information is necessary to understand and work with these principles in this setting? Second, what additional principles or recommendations are helpful for researchers interested in conducting research using a CBPR approach with tribal communities? We studied a variety of literature sources on CBPR and Native health research to answer these questions. We are unaware of any publications that contextualize CBPR principles for working with specific populations. This information has direct application for conducting research with tribal communities, and confirms the importance of using CBPR approaches in this setting.

http://www.pimatisiwin.com/online/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/01Contents.pdf

Contextualizing CBPR: Key Principles of CBPR meet the Indigenous research context.

The purpose of this article is to share lessons learned from implementing community-based participatory research (CBPR) in Indian Country that may be generalizable to other medically underserved communities. CBPR is currently included in multiple grant announcements by the National Institute of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but information about this methodology vs traditional research methodology is often misleading. This article addresses some common mistakes made by academic research institutes by sharing what we have learned about how CBPR can be implemented in a respectful manner. The majority of tribal Nations prefer, if not mandate, that CBPR be used in most proposed studies involving their communities today.

Suzanne Christopher

Papers

Building and Maintaining Trust in a Community-Based Participatory Research Partnership

Mind-Body Medicine and the Art of Self-Care: Teaching Mindfulness to Counseling Students through Yoga, Meditation, and Qigong.

Adapting Western research methods to indigenous ways of knowing.

Contextualizing CBPR: Key Principles of CBPR meet the Indigenous research context.

Lessons learned from community-based participatory research in Indian country.