The Researcher and the Researched: Community, Belonging, and Power in a Small New England Town

In Summer 2020, a small New England town (home to an elite, predominantly white college) embarked on a social work-led, community based participatory research (CBPR) project to understand how residents perceive and experience safety and wellbeing in their local community. Developed in response to both national and local discussions of racial justice and the scope and nature of policing, the project was commissioned by the Town Manager to provide actionable recommendations for aligning Town policies and practices – including those of the local police department - with community member’s expressed safety and wellbeing needs.

Guided by interpretive research methodology, the project employed in-depth interviews to capture the nuance and complexity of the concepts involved. Because the Town wanted to be as inclusive as possible, the project was widely advertised through mailings, community meetings, and local organizations. Any resident aged 18 or over was eligible to participate, and the resulting sample included 160 community members and five members of the police department. Demographic characteristics of participants were recorded in an effort to maximize equity and inclusion in the sample. The final sample was representative of the town population in most characteristics, although younger residents and Black residents were underrepresented. Six social workers volunteered to conduct in-depth interviews with community members and were trained by the lead researcher in active interviewing. Interviews were offered in-person, by phone, and by Zoom and were transcribed using Otter AI software. All transcriptions were verified by the lead researcher during the initial round of analysis. Transcripts were then uploaded into NVivo, which the lead researcher used to conduct multiple rounds of interpretive coding, attending to interviewees’ use of language and mapping this language use across interviews. This process is grounded in the concept of the hermeneutic circle, as the researcher moves between transcripts to discern relationships.

The findings from this project fall into two interrelated categories: 1. How diverse community members perceive and experience safety and wellbeing, and 2. How social workers engaged in CBPR in their own community confront power dynamics in the research process and in recommending change. This presentation will share both, with an emphasis on the latter, as the process findings directly relate to the conference’s interest in “co-creating knowledge and solutions to address injustices.” Most interviewees (both those who felt safe/well and those who did not) defined safety and wellbeing as matters of belonging and as collective responsibilities that require the engagement of all community members, not just Town officials (including police officers). Many interviewees also expressed desire for alternative, community-based systems to replace – or at least supplement – the current, police-reliant provision of safety and wellbeing in their town.

How individuals spoke about these issues – and how Town officials responded to the project’s approach and findings - revealed underlying conceptions of community as both a social and political construct, rife with race, gender, and socioeconomic power dynamics that shed light on what social workers might expect as they seek to “create, implement, and disseminate research for social impact.”