Independent journal · participatory research
Common Inquiry explains how communities, residents, patients and volunteers take part in research: participatory action research, citizen science, community data, ethics and the co-production of knowledge. Every guide is practical, cites its sources and dates its facts.
Featured guide
Door-to-door condition surveys, rent surveys, walking audits, photographs and maps: a step-by-step guide for tenants' groups and residents who want evidence that councils and landlords take seriously, with the ethics of protecting the neighbours who take part.
Read the guideHow participatory research is designed and run, from the action research cycle to cameras and maps.
MethodsFrom Kurt Lewin and Orlando Fals-Borda to today's community projects: the PAR cycle, team roles and the traps to avoid.
MethodsThe nine principles behind CBPR, what they ask of researchers and community partners, and how to tell real partnership from research that is merely located in a community.
MethodsCameras, group discussion and an exhibition for decision-makers: how to run a photovoice project, from training to ethics.
Volunteers collecting scientific data, and the questions of quality, ownership and openness that follow.
Citizen science & dataFrom the 1900 Christmas Bird Count to online galaxy classification: definitions, history and the main models of public participation in science.
Citizen science & dataWhat low-cost sensors can and cannot tell you, how to site and check them, and how resident data reach decision-makers.
Citizen science & dataCARE alongside FAIR, OCAP in Canada, the Havasupai case and practical steps for researchers working with Indigenous data.
Consent, fair pay, written agreements and the history behind community distrust of researchers.
Ethics & partnershipsFrom the Belmont Report to community ethics principles: what standard review misses when research is done with, not on, a community.
Ethics & partnershipsIndividual and collective consent, oral consent, photos, withdrawal and the GDPR: what consent really involves when neighbours interview neighbours.
Ethics & partnershipsParticipants, public contributors and co-researchers: how to pay people fairly, avoid benefit and tax problems, and get university systems to cooperate.
Designing participatory research.
Public data, quality and governance.
Doing right by communities.