This panel of four presenters will highlight how the underlying research paradigm affects the goals of research and evaluation studies, which subsequently impacts the design, outcomes, and the action taken based on the results. The presentation begins with a description of the paradigms and their potential impact and is followed by a description and examples of how research and evaluation design affect outcomes and an example of how some of these shortcomings can be overcome using community-based participatory research methods. The panel ends with a presentation about how researchers and evaluators can serve as instruments of deconstruction.
Questions discussed are:
- Thinking about your own experience with research and data, how can the research paradigm give voice to or silence communities?
- Reports often describe their methods as participatory even when the participants served only as research subjects. What constitutes a true participatory approach?
- What are some of the shortcomings of the “state of the art” research designs, such as Random Controlled Trials (RCT)?