Methods

The work of the SCRC is based in participatory methods and democratic processes. Our projects focus on expanding the opportunities and resources that communities command to create the future they envision.

The methods we employ value and make central the knowledge and perspectives of communities. Rather than using just one approach, or method, we draw from many types of research, organizing, and negotiation:

• Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR)

Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) CBPR creates a fully participatory partnership between community members and technically trained providers. The community and researcher are equally important in the partnership, however, CBPR projects begin with community-defined questions.

• Popular Education

Popular education, first formulated by Paolo Freire, is a pedagogic methodology that empowers individuals to act to effect change on the problems that affect them. These techniques allow students to correlate their personal experiences as individuals with larger societal problems.

• Alternative Dispute Resolution

Alternative Dispute Resolution techniques allow parties to reach mutually beneficial resolutions to issues, avoiding the need to resort to litigation. Usually mediated by a third party, the process allows the parties involved to share in the decision-making process. This third party has no stake in the outcome of the effort.

• Citizen Panels

Citizen Panels allow community members and other invested parties to participate in jury-style deliberations regarding issues that directly impact their lives. Lay members of a population form a panel, listen to expert and lay testimony, deliberate, and give judgments on cases.

• Action Research, Participatory Research and other alternatives to traditional research

Different methodologies fit under the umbrella term of Action Research. They all seek to improve the environments within a larger social organization by analyzing the reactions to the group’s habitual actions. Through each iterative process of the Action Research cycle, the parties find solutions to previously systemic problems within the workplaces or communities in question.

• Dialogue Sessions

Dialogue sessions allow diverse groups of people with divergent viewpoints to establish common ground regarding a conflictive situation or common problem. The imput from community members, stakeholders, leaders, and any other interested party allows a bigger, more dynamic definition of what's at stake to unfold. This inclusive process sheds light on the best angle from which to approach finding a solution.