The Movement from Principles to Practice: A Critical Interpretive Review of Community-Based, Participatory Research in Social Work

Background: There is little empirical evidence from which we can thoughtfully characterize the state of community-based, participatory research (CBPR) in social work. To what extent and how are social work researchers moving CBPR principles into practice? Insights into the nature of CBPR practice in social work draw primarily from non-empirical case examples and practice reflections that highlight the benefits, challenges, and ethics of CBPR in the context of a single project. Social work researchers interested in advancing their CBPR practice must then turn to the expanding research in related disciplines (e.g. psychology, public health, health promotion, adult education) and/or wade through the social work literature one project at a time. These piecemeal presentations of CBPR have stifled our ability to advance theory and practice in CBPR at a time when community-university collaborations are increasingly encouraged at the institutional level. To date, there have been few attempts to bring case examples, practice reflections and reports of CBPR practice together in a systematic way. Drawing on interpretive systematic review methods, this research offers a critical exploration of social work approaches to CBPR and a nuanced picture of practice within this discipline.

Methods: The review was implemented in two phases. 1) A scoping review of social work studies implemented through a CBPR framework in North America between 1990 and 2023 (N=246). While the purpose of these articles is to share findings, authors often include an expanded methods section outlining the CBPR process. Drawing on a content analysis of charted data from these methods sections, results document trends across research populations, social work practice areas, variants of CBPR practice, and regions in North America. 2) This phase provides a critical interpretive synthesis (CIS) of case examples and practice reflections written by social work researchers (N=173). Drawing on traditions from both qualitative research inquiry and systematic review methodology, a CIS approach was used to facilitate a deeper exploration of reflections from researchers as they enact the principles of CBPR. Specifically, this phase examined unfolding storylines in the literature that chronicle and contextualize the successes, challenges, ethics and outcomes of practicing CBPR in social work.

Findings: Beyond a descriptive summary of key project characteristics, scoping review findings provide a picture of the strategies social workers are using to enhance community collaboration and participation (e.g. peer researcher engagement, popular education, concept mapping, art-making, etc...). Findings from the interpretive review highlight tensions and opportunities to improve practice including 1) the nature of epistemic (in)justice in CBPR, 2) the disruptive consequences of competing clocks and temporalities across collaborators; and 3) CBPR’s potential to facilitate healing and resistance.

Conclusion/Implications: The movement from principles to practice is a slippery slope. Despite good intentions, researchers face a number of structural, institutional or interpersonal challenges that force them to make compromises around the principles of CBPR. These compromises in turn facilitate experiences of epistemic injustice that can move a project in the direction of extractive and exploitive research. Findings from this study will facilitate a discussion of potential strategies to mitigate these challenges.