April 7-9, 2022 • Hyatt Regency • Lexington, KY
Communication Strategies to Promote Comprehensive Well-being
Communication Strategies to Promote Comprehensive Well-being
Abstract: Purposeful or Popular: A Systematic Review of Why CBPR Teams Chose to Do CBPR
Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is a popular approach to research in which researchers work in partnership with community members to solve complex health issues (Israel et al., 1993; Minkler & Wallerstein, 2011). Due to the growing popularity of CBPR within academic circles, there has been an outcry to standardize CBPR (Kwan & Walsh, 2018; Peterson, 2010; Peterson & Aline, 2011, Wilson et al., 2018). Peterson (2010) argued that until CBPR practitioners can standardize what true participation is, CBPR will continue to be used as a trendy term that will perpetuate the status quo of research practices. However, standards can’t be created without examining what CBPR teams are actually doing in the field. To better understand what is happening within CBPR teams regarding communication and participation practices, a systematic review was conducted utilizing PRISMA protocol. This article examines part of these results regarding why teams chose to use CBPR. Articles published between 2015-2020 were pulled from Social Science Premium, Web of Science, and Pubmed to account for the multidisciplinary nature of CBPR. Articles had to discussion of one of these three items to be included for analysis 1) the discussion of the communication tactics used, 2) explore the relationship between academic and community members, or 3) describe the participation process of community members. If articles did not explain how the community was involved throughout the research process, if the community was relegated to only a participant role in the study, or if there were more than one CBPR team or intervention project being explored within the article, the article was excluded from analysis and the final sample. Multiple coders had to both agree that all articles met the requirements for eligibility. In total, the coders found a total of N=105 articles fit the inclusion criteria of the study. Coders used the constant comparative method of qualitative coding to inductively analyze the articles (Frey, Botan, & Kreps, 1999; Lindlof & Taylor, 2017). Of the total sample (N= 105), n=54 articles explicitly mentioned why they chose to use a CBPR approach. Four major categories emerged as identifiable reasons for teams to choose CBPR: (1) access to a hard to reach/distrustful community, (2) meeting needs for health equity, (3) focusing on the community’s strengths and capacities, and (4) as a means of ensuring intervention relevancy and acceptability. Understanding why a team does CBPR is important because it illustrates what the primary goal and focus for these teams may be. Gaining access to a hard-to-reach population is a benefit to researchers, while focusing on the strengths and local knowledge of communities highlights the community. The goal of this study is not to state which reason is more valid or in line with the principles of CBPR, but rather to understand what is currently happening in the field within CBPR teams. Ranging differences in why teams chose to use CBPR could also illustrate differences in the application of CBPR. Future research could examine the impact of CBPR motivations on team communication, participation, and research practices.