Street Participatory Action Research with Hard-to-Reach Black Women and Girls: Towards an Intersectional Criminological Approach

• In Event: Intersectionality and Women's Offending and Criminal Legal System Experiences

Abstract

Using an intersectional criminological approach, we examine how street participatory action research (Street PAR) can be used to engage hard-to-reach populations of Black women and girls who are involved in the streets and/or criminal legal system. Research on offending and victimization among marginalized Black women and girls poses unique methodological issues. Part of this challenge lies in the difficulty researchers face in gaining access to racially-stigmatized populations who may be involved in illegal activities, fear confrontation with legal authorities, or experience various forms of economic or social precarity. This hard-to-reach status complicates the research process and heightens ethical concerns about the safety and wellbeing of research participants. We offer Street PAR as a collaborative research strategy that includes hard-to-reach Black women and girls into the research process, from developing project design, data collection, data analysis, publications, and suggestions for action-based interventions. We outline the thematic benefits and challenges associated with Street PAR, and how we applied this framework to gather large samples of hard-to-reach Black women and girls in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Wilmington, Delaware. Many of these women were formerly incarcerated, involved in illegal activities, and/or were previously victimized. Street PAR advances an intellectual paradigm for community-based collaboration that can ultimately inform other mixed-methods designs and mitigate the limitations of existing research that use singular methodological approaches. This design can also be extended to other hard-to-reach populations on various sensitive topics.

Authors

• Brooklynn Hitchens, University of Maryland

• Yasser A. Payne, University of Delaware