Participatory Action Research Among People With Serious Mental Illness: A Scoping Review.

Participatory action research (PAR) is a research approach that creates spaces for marginalized individuals and communities to be co-researchers to guide relevant social change. While working toward social transformation, all members of the PAR team often experience personal transformation. Engaging people with serious mental illness (PSMI) in PAR helps them to develop skills and build relationships with stakeholders in their communities. It supports positive changes that persist after the completion of the formal research project. With the increasing recognition of PAR's value in PSMI, it is helpful to consider the challenges and advantages of this approach to research with this population. This review aimed at determining how PAR has been conducted with PSMI and at summarizing strategies used to empower PSMI as co-researchers by engaging them in research. This scoping review followed five steps Arkesy and O'Malley (2005) outlined. We charted, collated, and summarized relevant information from 87 studies that met the inclusion criteria. We identified five strategies to empower PSMI through PAR. These are to build capacity, balance power distribution, create collaborative environments, promote peer support, and enhance their engagement as co-researchers. In conclusion, PAR is an efficient research approach to engage PSMI. Further, PSMI who engage in PAR may benefit from strategies for empowerment that meet their unique needs as co-researchers.

Participatory Action Research With Older Adults: A Critical Interpretive Synthesis.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Given population aging, the meaningful involvement of older adults in influencing policy and programs through participatory action research (PAR) is increasingly vital. PAR holds promise for equitable participation, co-learning, community mobilization, and personal and social transformation, however, little scholarly attention has been given to critically evaluating how PAR has been taken up with older adults. The objective of this review was to critically evaluate the use of PAR with older adults. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: A critical interpretive synthesis (CIS) of 40 PAR studies with older adults was conducted. Critical engagement with the articles identified dominant tendencies, limits of these tendencies, and proposed ways forward. RESULTS: Within the majority of articles reviewed, older adults were not prominent partners in PAR given their often limited involvement in designing the research questions, learning research skills and knowledge, and implementing findings for change. Furthermore, power differentials between researchers and older adults were evident, as older adults were often positioned as participants rather than partners. Finally, this article demonstrates various boundaries on the foci of studies related to inclusivity and sustainability. DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS: This study revealed that the promises PAR holds are often not fully realized in projects with older adults, given that they are rarely positioned as equitable partners, co-learners, or agents for change. The findings have the potential to stimulate further uptake of PAR research with an older adult population, highlighting areas for change in systems and research practices.

A critical interpretive synthesis: Use of the occupational justice framework in research.

BACKGROUND: The occupational justice framework was established in the late 1990s with an agenda to spur occupational therapists to take action against injustices pertaining to occupation. METHODS: A critical interpretive synthesis of 23 texts was undertaken to examine how the occupational justice framework has been utilised in research, with a particular focus on how such research is located on a knowledge to action continuum and the extent to which it enacts the call to remediate occupational injustices. RESULTS: Within the texts reviewed, the occupational justice framework was predominantly used to interpret research findings, and only four studies explicitly used an action research approach. There was also a dominant tendency to individualise situations of occupational justice, but with some examples attending to the social and political production of injustices. Absences and silences related to the locations of the research in developed regions and a focus on conceptualisations of justice commensurate with a Western worldview were evident. CONCLUSIONS: Full realisation of the potential contributions of the occupational justice framework requires challenging traditional modes of research that focus primarily on knowledge generation, and expanding into modes of research that embrace a knowledge to action continuum. This expansion, which will enable occupational justice research to more fully embrace action-oriented work, requires practicing epistemological reflexivity, adopting a critical stance, incorporating a participatory action research approach and collaborating with scholars from different disciplines.