Lynne Mock was a master’s student at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) at the time the PAR project began in 1990. She ultimately did both her master’s thesis and her doctoral dissertation in community psychology as part of this research team, which was led by James Kelly, a professor in community psychology and long-time practitioner and advocate of participatory research.
Dr. Kelly and several graduate students worked with a church-based community-organizing group, the Developing Communities Project (DCP), to document
the development of African American community leaders in the Chicago south side community where DCP is located.
Whereas this PAR project represented nonconventional research in social science terms—particularly for a psychology department—Mock’s dissertation drew on some fairly traditional qualitative and quantitative research methods.
Furthermore, unlike some PAR dissertations that have a more self-reflective, narrative style, this one is an articulate and intelligently written, but concise exposition of the research. We selected this example in part because it is well documented through publications that contextualize the study and provide accounts of behind-the-scenes decision making, and because we believe that many students who do action research dissertations may have fairly traditional committees. Thus, as we cautioned in chapter 5, it is wise to view the disser-tation as in part a political document that is written—like all writing—for a particular audience. What might be acceptable and even encouraged in an avant-garde women’s studies program might not fly in a traditional depart-ment of psychology.
The number of university faculty capable of guiding a student through a path-breaking PAR dissertation are few, and in some fields nonexistent. In fact, many students do action research dissertations without any particular recog-nition on the part of the student or committee members that their research departs radically from both traditional quantitative and qualitative research.
Such dissertations, as we described in chapter 3, can end up positioning the researcher in an awkward outsider-within status in which a full examination of the inside/outside and collaborative tensions in the research are ignored or sidestepped.
As mentioned above, the project was chosen in part because of the amount of formal and informal documentation that existed (Kelly, 1999; Kelly et al., 2004; Kelly, Mock, & Tandon, 2001; Tandon, Kelly, & Mock, 2001). The genesis of this project was a funding grant that the DCP was seeking that contained an evaluation component. James Kelly describes how this occurred:
A staff member . . . of a State Agency (Department of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse) phoned in the fall of 1989 to inquire of my interest to evaluate a substance abuse proposal in an African-American community. The then Director of the Agency . . . had been employing the ecological framework in training prevention staff. [She] thought that I might be an appropriate resource for this work. I thought that this might be an opportunity to do just what I really wanted to do:
to be connected to citizen leadership development and to create a research site for doctoral students in community psychology. (Kelly et al., 2004, p. 206)
The DCP would receive $150,000 a year for community organizing activ-ities, with an extra $50,000 for an evaluation component. A meeting was set up with Department of Alcoholism and Substance abuse staff, the director and
associate director of DCP, and Dr. Kelly. The following is Dr. Kelly’s account of the meeting:
I made two points at the meeting: First, it is a mistake to devote time and energy to evaluate community organizing efforts by imposing various experimental designs and thereby think that one could assess and/or control the multiple factors that impact a diminution of the use of substances at the community level. An alternative evaluation approach could concentrate on documenting community members who were being trained and developed as community leaders by the organization.
The premise would be that a community that has competent and well-organized participants could in turn mobilize substantial community efforts and resources to reduce social problems in their own community. Second, if I was to be involved, I would hope that the work could be collaborative, in that all decisions about eval-uation methods and procedures would be a process of joint decision making between the DCP participants and UIC. The DCP staff seemed surprised and posi-tive about my approach. (Kelly et al., 2004, p. 207)
THE ENTRY PROCESS
According to Dick (2000), a PAR dissertation should make clear how entry into the client system was negotiated and how structures were set up for par-ticipation. PAR depends on a careful initial building of relationships and nego-tiation of roles, often referred to as the entry process. Dr. Kelly describes how he worked to gain the confidence of the DCP staff in subsequent encounters.
Community organizations are busy places and meetings are difficult to set up.
After several failed attempts at face-to-face meetings and a few phone conver-sations, a face-to-face encounter with the DCP executive director, John Owens, became a key event in the entry process. It is important to know that Dr. Kelly was a white professor at the local flagship public university. John Owens was an African American with roots in the local community, likely somewhat skepti-cal of “ivory tower” academics. Dr. Kelly describes the encounter:
John Owens volunteered to come to my office at the University. On my office door was a picture of Max Roach, Jazz drummer. . . . John seemed shocked and/or amazed. Then he smiled and said ‘Kelly, you can’t be all bad.’ He was an avid jazz fan. Our conversation that afternoon was animated. Before we discussed our work together we must have spent twenty minutes discussing our favorite jazz musi-cians and CDs. He had a dinner meeting in downtown Chicago so in departing the university I accompanied him and left him at his restaurant. This was the “ice breaker” event in the entry process. (Kelly et al., 2004, p. 207)
We present this example of an entry process because participatory research often requires a considerable amount of time and effort to establish rapport among participants. In this case, not only did organizational and status differ-ences need to be negotiated, but a white academic had to be viewed as credible
and trustworthy by an activist African American community organization.
While Lynne Mock, who later produced a dissertation from this study, was not involved at this stage of entry, many doctoral students will essentially find themselves in Dr. Kelly’s shoes, needing to build credibility with participants.
(See Maguire, 1987b, 1993, for an account of this process from a doctoral student’s perspective.)
Even a doctoral student entering the process after formal entry has been negotiated must establish credibility with participants in order to work tively as a participatory researcher. Furthermore, if entry has not been effec-tively negotiated, a doctoral student will find it difficult to gather authentic data. Mock, who was the only African American on the university research team, discusses these tensions:
When Sandra interviewed me in the fall of 1990, I expressed concerns about how I would be perceived on the project. I started out with a lot of questions and con-cerns. Being the only African-American on the project, would I be perceived as a token on the project? Will I be perceived as a ‘collaborator’ in the negative sense—
a black person working for the university and exploiting the Black community?
Was the evaluation requested by the community organization or required of them? Over time, I learned that I would be valued for my growing expertise in our work and for my experiences as an African-American woman. The main differ-ence between myself and the members of the panel was my formal training in psy-chology. Although the evaluation was required, the organization did have a choice in who would be conducting the evaluation and how it would be done. Everyone was very positive about our collaborative approach to documenting the work of the organization. (Kelly et al., 2004, p. 211)
Villenas (1996) has also described the dilemmas of scholars of color who are associated with dominant institutions as they do research within commu-nities of color. These complex issues of boundary crossing should be discussed at length in action research dissertations, because the trustworthiness of the data depends on effectively negotiating entry and building rapport with participants.
In Mock’s case, she was an outsider to this particular community but, as an African American, was in some respects more of an insider than her non–African American research colleagues.
CREATING PARTICIPATORY STRUCTURES
Shortly after his meeting with John Owens, Dr. Kelly met with the DCP board and recommended they appoint a DCP-UIC liaison person who would advise on the style and substance of the work, facilitate data collection, and interpret the needs of the DCP community to the university group and vice versa. While the liaison would be an important conduit of information and socialization, a more representative group was needed to make the project truly
participatory. John Owens composed an eight-person community research panel made up of DCP members who would meet with the UIC group to decide on what topics should be documented and what methods should be used. The panel included a parent, a Catholic elementary school principal, a welfare rights advocate, a public school principal, a community organization executive, a labor organizer, a citizen active in school reform, and a pastor. At this point, two grad-uate students, Cecile Lardon, in community psychology, and Lynne Mock, in clinical psychology, agreed to work on the project. Ultimately, four master’s theses and two doctoral dissertations resulted from this PAR project.
The following quote from Mock’s (1999) dissertation discusses the impor-tance of participatory structures for the collaboration of participants in all stages of the study.
The author, in conjunction with a team of researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago worked in collaboration with a Community Research Panel (CRP) and an Action Task Force (ATF) (Kelly, 1992; in press). The CRP was created in 1990 when the executive director of DCP was asked to recommend eight citizens of various backgrounds: The Community Research Panel (CRP) was an invaluable resource for helping the author and other UIC researchers define goals and methods for docu-menting community leadership development. The CRP critically evaluated research concepts and topics presented by the UIC researchers for the documentation, and also, recommended new themes, concepts, and topics to be addressed (Glidewell, Kelly, Bagby, and Dickerson, 1998; Mock, 1994; Kelly, 1992; 1993).
This research also affirms a concept of emerging importance in community psychology: collaborative research methods (Tyler, Pargament, & Glanz, 1983;
Whyte, 1986;1989; Kingry-Westergaard & Kelly, 1986; Greenwood, Whyte, &
Harkavy, 1993). The direction of this study was further stimulated by discussions with members of the Community Research Panel (CRP) who were consulted dur-ing the conceptualization of this project. Ideally, the involvement of community residents and leaders would increase the utility of the research for the participants and others in the setting (Chavis, Stucky, & Wandersman, 1983; Whyte, 1986;
1989; Kingry-Westergaard & Kelly, 1986; Greenwood, Whyte, & Harkavy, 1993).
DCP is in the process of planning to use these research findings in the future training of DCP leaders (Kelly, in press).
The Action Task Force (ATF) was created in 1997 to collaborate with the research team on the interpretation and utility of the data collected for the larger study (including Study 1 and 2 described below). The ATF consists of ten DCP leaders nominated by the current executive director, and is chaired by the UIC DCP liaison who is also the secretary of the DCP Board of Directors. Nine meet-ings, including a retreat, have been held to date culminating in recommendations to the DCP Board regarding specific actions to be taken based on the research data, for example, the creation of a leadership training materials. (pp. 30–31)
These panels and task forces made up of agency and community members participated in every phase of the research. It is important for a dissertation to make clear the degree of collaboration with participants. In chapter 4, we
discussed catalytic validity of action research, particularly when it is participative.
PAR is valid in this sense to the extent that the research is educative for all parties and stimulates some action. Limiting participation to the initial stages of a project or merely involving them at the end to validate findings reduces the catalytic validity of the research. To the extent that diverse perspectives are not included, it also reduces the study’s democratic validity.
Many wonder how collaborative data analysis works in practice. Tandon, Kelly, and Mock (2001) provide an in-depth discussion of how participants collaborated in data gathering and analysis.
Because this process was labor intensive, the UIC research team did not ask DCP members to assist in coding the eighty interviews. Cognizant of the time demands placed upon DCP staff, board, and members, the UIC research team felt that con-tinuous dialogue with the DCP executive director and the UIC/DCP liaison person was a more prudent approach in discussing the initial data analysis. The executive director and liaison person actively undertook two responsibilities.
First, they examined each of the sixty codes for clarity. Specifically, they reviewed codes’ definitions and suggested alternative wordings to accurately reflect the nature of the codes in the larger context of DCP. Second, the codes were examined for their potential relevance and utility for DCP. Further, the executive director and liaison person identified codes of particular interest to DCP. Codes relating to DCPs church-based organization were among those strongly supported by DCP’s executive director, as she was interested in understanding the role that religion had in the work of DCP members.
Working with DCP’s executive director and liaison person, we created a set of fifty-six mutually agreed upon codes. Thus, DCP and the UIC research team jointly shaped the building blocks for future data analysis and interpretation.
Furthermore, these preliminary data analysis steps attempted to acknowledge both parties’ unique skills and expertise. UIC research team members were responsible for the technical aspects of generating codes from interview tran-scripts, as they were more skilled in executing data analytic techniques; DCP members employed their knowledge about the host organization and the poten-tial utility to clarify and refine various codes.
The underlying importance of the data analysis stage of PAR is to stimulate research participants’ thinking about the potential utility of collected data. The degree to which participants are involved in the actual mechanical aspects of coding interviews or running statistical analyses will vary across projects, but the notion that research participants should understand key findings and their relevance is central. (p. 205)
A member of the UIC research team also prepared a quote book with examples of quotes of interviewees that represented the various codes. This provided a better sense to participants of the relevance and meaning of the codes. The team also prepared tree-shaped data displays that grouped codes into five general themes of community leadership. The quote book and the data displays facilitated further data analysis and discussion with participants.
Data analysis is often the final stage of most research, but because PAR is action oriented, a community action task force was formed to discuss how this data could inform next steps.
At an all day meeting in November 1997 several concrete proposals were made to increase the visibility of the findings within the DCP community. Examples were for every church to create a DCP Newsletter and a brochure for recruiting. Follow up discussions with sub groups of the Action Task Force reemphasized how the data could contribute to training needs. In the spring of 1998 at meetings of sub groups of the Action Task Force DCP participants gave anecdotes about events that should be captured and included in training materials. It was at this point that I mentioned the possible benefit of oral histories as a resource, particularly if they were videotaped. There was enthusiasm for this idea. The Action Force Task Members believed that the videos could be used for fund raising as well as training.
Some believed that they could also provide a history of DCP. (Tandon, Kelly, &
Mock, 2001, p. 207)
Videos of six DCP leaders were produced with an edited version with selections from each of the six individual videos. Although Lynne Mock was part of this multiyear research process from shortly after entry, her work as part of the research team and her data gathering for her dissertation proceeded on parallel and often overlapping tracks. The results of the collaboratively gathered qualitative data formed the basis for the largely individual develop-ment of the Personal Vision Scale (PVS) that became the centerpiece of her dissertation.
WRITING THE DISSERTATION
This section will not systematically summarize the findings of Lynne Mock’s dissertation, which can be accessed through Dissertation Abstracts.
Our interest is in how a doctoral student who participated in a PAR project crafted a dissertation out of a collaborative research effort. The primary audi-ence of a dissertation is a committee, made up of faculty with particular disci-plinary backgrounds and expectations of what a dissertation should look like.
Mock’s academic program consisted of both clinical and community psychol-ogy, two subfields of psychology with very different research traditions. In a methodologically conservative field like psychology, Mock needed to construct a dissertation that would look fairly traditional, while justifying the kind of collaborative approach more characteristic of community psychology than other subfields.
Mock’s (1999) dissertation actually consists of three studies. She contributed to the qualitative, descriptive part of the study but also incorporated a more individual component in which she validated her PVS and compared DCP leaders with a sample of community residents.
The first study employed semi-structured interviews to explore the content and structure of community leaders’ personal visions, related goals, and circumstances under which personal visions are discussed. The second study, using a subsample of community leaders from the first study, sought to provide further support for the construct validity of the Personal Vision Scale (PVS). The PVS assesses the visioning process with the assumption that visioning occurs in three develop-mental phases. The third study employed questionnaires and the PVS to contrast the personal vision content, structure, and PVS scores of DCP leaders and a sample of community residents. (p. xi)
Her review of the literature was done in a separate chapter and in a tradi-tional manner. (For a good resource on writing a literature review, see Hart, 1998.) She reviewed the literature on visionary and transformational leadership, as well as literature on leadership scale development. While notions of visionary and transformative leadership are popular, they are also very complex concepts that vary from context to context. Drawing on the experience of a visionary such as Martin Luther King and the grassroots movement he helped to create, Mock (1999) sought to understand how local communities developed these qualities in their members. She ended the review by calling for more studies of leadership in community-based organizations, such as the one she was studying.
Her review of the literature was done in a separate chapter and in a tradi-tional manner. (For a good resource on writing a literature review, see Hart, 1998.) She reviewed the literature on visionary and transformational leadership, as well as literature on leadership scale development. While notions of visionary and transformative leadership are popular, they are also very complex concepts that vary from context to context. Drawing on the experience of a visionary such as Martin Luther King and the grassroots movement he helped to create, Mock (1999) sought to understand how local communities developed these qualities in their members. She ended the review by calling for more studies of leadership in community-based organizations, such as the one she was studying.