Participatory research and BME communities

Andy Steele discusses the benefits of ensuring the community has an active involvement in the collection of research data.

Traditional approaches to Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) housing and related needs studies have tended to regard the ethnic minority communities simply in terms of research ‘subjects’ rather than research partners. This has often meant that external interviewers have been ‘parachuted’ into communities, with little understanding of the individual community dynamics and little formal engagement beyond the interview format. This has left many communities in a sense of bewilderment, generally unaware of the nature of the research and no sense of ownership of the research process or the outcomes. Consequently, commissioners of such studies have found it difficult to sustain engagement with the BME communities beyond the research phase. This approach has, in many cases, simply fuelled a sense of skepticism on the part of the communities about the nature and relevance of such community research.

Staff from the Salford Housing and Urban Studies Unit at the University of Salford have recently developed a new approach to BME housing needs studies in response to these problems. This approach involves the development of a collaborative approach to research with the community having an active involvement in the collection of the research data. It focuses on the recruitment and training of BME community representatives as Community Interviewers. They represent a key link between the individual ethic minority communities, the consultants/researchers and the study commissioners. The success of this approach is greatly dependent upon the active support of all parties and particularly in relation to the implementation of a recruitment campaign. This approach has been successfully employed in BME studies in Essex (incorporating 14 local authorities and their partners), South Nottinghamshire (5 local authorities), Trafford, Stockport, Bolton and the London Borough of Redbridge. It does offer a number of benefits over the more traditional approach for both the BME community and the research commissioners. From the point of view of the community and the individual Community Interviewers, we have found that:

· It offers the opportunity for those community members who are not economically active to develop or update their skills. The flexibility of interviewing has been attractive to women and other groups who have childcare and other family responsibilities;

· It provides an additional source of income (the interviewers are paid on the basis of the number of completed interviews) which contributes to the economic sustainability of their respective communities;

· It enables individuals to gain confidence to engage with people outside their immediate social networks and gain a greater appreciation of other cultures and customs. The Community Interviewer debriefing sessions highlighted this as one of the major benefits of their involvement, particularly for some of the Asian women;

· It can lead to enhanced employment opportunities and for those who have not worked for a period of time, it gives them a supported introduction to the work environment. Those who complete the training programme are awarded with a Certificate of Attendance from the University of Salford. There is also the potential for additional work being commissioned. In all the above cases, the respective commissioners/local authorities have been keen to develop a database of BME Community Interviewers who could be called upon to contribute to other research studies either commissioned by themselves or partner organisations. In the case of the Bolton BME studies, which involved 549 household interviews, the Community Interviewers have subsequently been engaged on a study of 8,000 households across the Borough; and

· It develops a sense of shared ownership of the study and its findings by the BME communities involved.

From the point of view of the commissioning body this approach can:

· Result in a more diverse BME community participating in the research. This is particularly important in attempting to reach the smaller BME and ‘hard to reach’ communities. In the recent Trafford BME study 40 individual BME community groups were identified including Malaysians, Thais, Polish, Bosnians and Iranians. In this way, service providers are able to acknowledge and develop an informed response to the diversity of cultures within a given area and thus supporting the agenda of inclusively.

· Provides a platform for the future engagement of the BME community beyond the life of the research project. In the case of the Community Interviewers in Essex, following the completion of the research, they assumed the role of ‘Consultation Champions’, representing a vital link between the local authorities and the community.

This approach, however, is not without its drawbacks. First, the potential dropout rate among the trained interviewers can be as high as one third which needs to be compensated for at the recruitment stage and which in turn is reliant upon a successful advertising campaign. From experience, one way of ensuring that community organisations and the statutory bodies actively support the project is to have an official study launch where their potential contribution to the study is explained. In the case of Essex, over 600 recruitment posters were distributed by a wide range of organisations to community venues, such as community centers, GP surgeries and local housing offices. Second, there is a need for intensive fieldwork management with a number of mechanisms needed to sustain the motivation of the interviewers, such as regular individual and group debriefing sessions and frequent telephone contact. Third, the ethnic profile of the field force will influence the number of ethnic groups in the final sample as most of the interviewers, from experience, tend to identify households to participate in the study from within their own ethnic community. Encouraging the Community Interviewers to engage with other ethnic groups can take time and a great deal of support.

On balance, however, the potential benefits for the study of recruiting Community Interviewers from within the BME communities outweighs the potential drawbacks. If things don’t quite go to plan, there is always the contingency of employing a commercial market research company who have bi-lingual interviewers. Where this has proved necessary, for instance for the study in South Nottinghamshire, both the market research company and the Community Interviewers worked in tandem to meet the study deadline.

Engaging with the BME community in such a partnership approach to housing needs studies can help foster a sustainable relationship between service providers and the BME community. At a time when organisations are under increasing pressure to consult with all their local communities, such a legacy can be an important catalyst in its own right for adopting this participatory approach to BME research.

Further information can be obtained from:

Andy Steele – 0161 295 2140 or a.steele@salford.ac.uk

Professor Andy Steele, Director, Salford Housing & Urban Studies Unit, School of Environment and Life Sciences, University of Salfordtop