A Handbook for Participatory Action Researchers

Abstract

Summary: This handbook provides guidelines for conducting participatory action research (PAR) with people who have psychiatric disabilities. PAR has gained prominence as a method for insuring the relevance and utility of research by involving the people the research is intended to impact in a co-learning process with investigators. The handbook supplies principles and strategies that can be modified to respond to different purposes and contexts of conducting PAR, i.e., program evaluation, experimental, and qualitative research. Although the examples and learnings are drawn from a particular PAR project with people who have psychiatric disabilities, the strategies described are applicable to PAR projects with any other population.