Before adopting participatory methods for research, it is essential to assess whether you, and your co-researchers, have sufficient time and resources (funding) to ensure genuine collaboration. Reflect on whether the engagement is truly participatory or risks creating an “illusion of inclusion.” Involving community members should avoid research fatigue and not feel obligatory, particularly where cultural contexts shape willingness to participate. Finally, consider where power lies in your research—aiming to shift control to communities when possible and ensuring all voices, especially including women, youth and senior citizens, can meaningfully shape the research outcomes. In many ways, the same considerations should be taken into account that are highlighted in Module 2 (When to do transdisciplinarity) of the Transdisciplinarity Learning Pathway of ensuring enough time, resources and openness to learning is accounted for. 

Some questions to consider before you adopt a participatory research approach: 

•Do you have enough time and resources to carry out truly participatory research?

•What power imbalances need to be acknowledged and addressed that could affect co-researchers’ capacity to participate fully?

•What kind of historical injustices need to be acknowledged and responded to in the research process? (this is part of being grounded in context)

•How are you going to work with multiple knowledge systems? (eg. experiential, situated, political, social movement as well as scientific knowledge)

•Consider the various time pressures as well as economic constraints that co-researchers may be facing and that can affect their capacity to collaborate. 

•Are you creating an ‘illusion of inclusion’ or is your project design truly participatory?

We wish to highlight several other critical and quite powerful questions that should be asked when considering doing participatory research. These questions are raised from the author of the first resource shared below. These questions are “a vehicle to critical concerns for the practice of arts-based transdisciplinary research by researchers, artists, community leaders and practitioners. They will need to be re-visited across time and project type, however they provide a basis for critical reflection” (Anna James, One Ocean Hub newsletter reflection, January 2021):

•How am I representing the voice of others?

•Have I considered all the terms I am using in conversation with the participants?

•How am I situating my process in relation to myself, my participants, broader social structures and the planet, so that I do not abstract the process from the context in which it emerged?

•What does my relationship building process look like that led to the engagement?

•Have I reflected on my positioning in relation to antiblack racism within South African Society?

•Why is it important that I work with the subjects I am working with? What assumptions do I have about them? How are invisible assumptions I did not realise I had made visible for me in the context of this research practice? How am I continuously disrupted and reminded about my own learning journey?

•Have I done a significant analysis of the challenge to which my research responds and have I attempted to make contact with other researchers who are looking at different aspects, actors of the problem?

•Have I adequately considered what I am giving and what I am taking from this interaction with research partners/subjects? What is my impact and how am I impacted? Without over-burdening the researcher with the weight of the world (after all, a researcher is just another job), have I adequately accounted for my privilege in these relationships, and therefore what I can reasonably offer of myself and my position to be in service to others’ projects or needs?

•Am I working hard enough at ensuring integrity in my relationship building, positionality statements, expressions of solidarity – and finding ways of striving for sincerity over piety? This is rather than performing in a way that utters the correct words and does the correct actions without being attuned to the essence of the encounter.