Buy-in Is Not a Given: Community-Based Participatory Research within the Context of Violence Prevention Program Evaluation

Background: Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) is defined as a collaborative approach to research and evaluation that equitably involves all partners (program stakeholders, researchers, and program recipients) in the research process and aims to combine knowledge with action to achieve sustainable, social change and researchers and evaluators have recognized the strengths to such an approach. However, how this rapport progresses in real-world settings is often overlooked. In this presentation we discuss the progression of the rapport between frontline workers of a community violence intervention (CVI) program and the evaluation partner and describe four ways in which CVI workers have taken the lead on modifications to the evaluation approach and become more participatory.

Method: This study was part of a larger project seeking to strengthen the link between a Hospital-Based Violence Intervention program and a community-based violence response program. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with a combined 24 supervisory and front-line staff of both the hospital and CVI programs to assess the familiarity of staff from each program with the other in regard to mission, goals, challenges, and mechanisms of collaboration. The interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed and interviews were analyzed using Atlas TI software. Thematic analysis of the results are summarized below;

Results: Analysis of the interviews with supervisory staff and front-line workers identified four ways in which staff across the project have increased their participation and involvement in the evaluation since the start of the project. The following themes illuminate how to generate collaboration and buy-in from CVI staff in program evaluation processes. They include 1) involving staff in the development of interview protocols for cross-site evaluation, 2) allowing for staff to contribute to the generation of job descriptions that more accurately depict the role of front-line workers 3) integrating CVI staff into the development of case-study protocols and 4) uplifting staff leadership and perspective in staff development and training activities.

Conclusion: The results and findings have implications for evaluator and stakeholder expectations regarding buy-in for CBPR. The developing of rapport and stakeholder buy-in is not a certainty but rather a process and the findings presented here describe a progression of how stakeholders gradually assume leadership over time that approaches participatory research practices. How participation among staff reflects improvements across CBPR is emphasized, and the presentation concludes with a discussion for broader implications related research and evaluation of community-led, culturally responsive social work practice pertaining to firearm violence reduction.