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- Title
Encounters with Participatory Action Research.
- Authors
Whyte, William Foote
- Abstract
The article discusses the role of participatory action research (PAR) in scientific contributions and important practical results. The article cites example of a Norwegian Industrial Democracy Project. The author was a member of the "Society of Fellows" at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was asked to accept a commitment to do basic research, without any concern of how his research might be put to practical use. In a district where unemployment was over 40 percent and where people were crowded into dilapidated old flats, it was hard to avoid thinking of what might be done. On two occasions the author allowed his social concerns to move him to action. He organized a protest march on city hall. This was the author's first encounter with PAR. PAR contrasts with standard ways of doing sociological research. According to the conventional procedures, after thoroughly immersing oneself in the research literature, the sociologist states what ought to be true in the form of hypotheses, and then goes out to test them to see if he or she has guessed right. PAR abandons this guessing game and proceeds to build grounded theory out of research designed to lead to practical actions.
- Subjects
CAMBRIDGE (Mass.); MASSACHUSETTS; UNITED States; ACTION research; SOCIAL action; UNEMPLOYMENT; HARVARD University
- Publication
Qualitative Sociology, 1995, Vol 18, Issue 3, p289
- ISSN
0162-0436
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/BF02393343