A Duoethnographic Evaluation of the SCORE Process and Partnership

• In Event: Decision-Makers at Every Stage: Designing, Implementing, and Reflecting on a Community-Centered Research-Practice Partnership Project

Abstract

Purpose
Participatory research projects require ongoing, critical reflection and dialogue (Feekery 2023; Luguetti et al. 2023; Torre et al. 2018). Because our (the authors’) roles in the project were from different vantage points, a fuller understanding of what we did and how we did it required dialogue across our organizations. This paper is a duoethnographic evaluation of our SCORE process and partnership. Our guiding research question is to what degree did our SCORE process align with and depart from principles of community-based research (CBR) and critical participatory action research (CPAR)?

Theoretical Framework
Strand et al. (2003) delineate three principles of CBR: collaboration, democratization of knowledge, and social change and social justice. Fine (2013) describes CPAR as an epistemology, a way of knowing and understanding where knowledge is, and whose knowledge gets legitimated. We ground SCORE in both CPAR and CBR because together, they reflect our epistemological stance and methodological approach.

Method
Duoethnography is a qualitative methodology that engages researchers as participants in dialogue about social or cultural phenomena (Burleigh and Burm 2022; Wagaman and Sanchez 2017). Duoethnographies make the voice of each researcher explicit, unlike co-constructed narratives which attempt to collapse two stories into one (Norris and Sawyer 2012).

Data Sources
Inspired by Snipes and LePeau’s (2017) methodology and the method of currere (Pinar 1975), we wrote reflective essays on our previous experiences with CBR, and the future of our work. We used these essays to co-construct interview protocols. We recorded two conversations on Zoom, each lasting just under an hour. We analyzed the transcriptions and reflective essays deductively using the principles of CBR and CPAR.

Results
Our findings from this duoethnography describe points of alignment and departure from the principles of CBR and CPAR, yet we determined that meeting the principles cannot be looked at through a binary framing of either having met them with complete fidelity or not having met them at all. The way these principles play out in the field is complicated, surfacing a tension between these principles as values we went into this project with and the pragmatic limitations of running a project of this scope. This push and pull of what we wanted to do and what we were able to do due to structural constraints like time and capacity resulted in SCORE meeting some of these principles well, while falling short of meeting others fully.

Scholarly Significance
As we engaged in conversation through this duoethnography, it became clear to us that as a team, we severely underestimated the amount of work required to develop our RPP in alignment with our values. Some of the process challenges highlighted in this paper may have been assuaged had we had more intentional conversations about expectations, process, and capacity (Feekery 2023). Our duoethnography allowed us to apply what we have learned to our other SCORE sites and future work, and provides an exemplar for other community-based researchers to learn from our experiences.

Authors

• Adrienne C. Goss, Clark Atlanta University

• Juan Pablo Blanco, Roger Williams University