Multilingual and Community-Driven Research Dissemination, Action, and Policy Change in Community Based Participatory Research: Autoethnographic Narratives from a Multi-Year Collaboration

Background and Purpose: Research has documented multilevel impacts of Participatory Action Research and Community-Based Participatory Research (PAR/CBPR) to promote social justice and democratic participation. In PAR/CBPR, research participants act as co-researchers throughout all research phases enhancing scientific rigor, validity, and translation. Through this epistemological framework, knowledge generation, dissemination, and transfer is centered around the vision of community stakeholders most impacted by social inequities. However, numerous challenges emerge when researchers and community stakeholders engage in meaningful action and research dissemination initiatives due to the privatization and incorporation of neoliberal market-driven metrics in academic knowledge production processes. While research has documented significant changes in social work practice, education, and policy associated with research dissemination and translation, limited attention has been given to examine the impacts of research dissemination efforts on multiple stakeholders at the intersection of language justice, education, and policy. This study explores the multi-year, multilevel, and multilingual PAR/CBPR action and dissemination initiatives of a Community Action Team (CAT) to support immigrant caregivers of youth with disabilities with the development of culturally and linguistically responsive resources; implementation of trainings to practitioners, advocates, and providers; and policy advocacy of a statewide bill.

Methods: Situational analysis mapping and critical autoethnography were employed to analyze the multi-year PAR/CBPR action and dissemination materials. Data included multilingual meeting notes, recordings, presentations, handouts, executive summaries, policy briefs, online media, and multimedia resources. Drawing from decolonial, language justice, and critical theory, iterative readings of the data were performed followed by mapping, memoing, and narrative development to examine social, relational, and positional discourses of social change within PAR/CBPR research dissemination efforts. Emerging discourses and narratives were identified and relationships between them were further examined.

Findings: Findings illustrated multilevel elements that promote and hinder action and dissemination initiatives within PAR/CBPR collaborations. Individual and collective strengths, commitments, and collaborative relationships facilitated research dissemination strategies to support culturally and linguistically statewide legislation and service provision to immigrant caregivers of youth with disabilities. Additionally, limited capacity, resources, and colonial dominant narratives of knowledge production and extraction hindered PAR/CBPR action initiatives.

Conclusion and Implications: Consistent with existing research, findings suggest PAR/CBPR has the potential to create meaningful impact relevant for policy and practice in alignment with the profession’s pursuit of social justice for vulnerable communities. By engaging in a series of critical self reflexive writing, mapping, and memoing exercises, narratives converged across common themes and discourses that highlight the importance of cultivating counterspaces of PAR/CBPR action initiatives that embody community-driven, transdisciplinarity, and collaborative social relationships.