After relationships are established, it is time to start working together using an approach that is inclusive, respectful, democratic, and equitable.
Conduct research that centers on communities’ priorities and agendas.
Spend time with community leaders, representatives, and residents to learn which issues are most important to them. Discuss how research might play a role in documenting or better understanding a problem and developing and testing solutions to ameliorate it. In such discussions, be sure not to exaggerate what a particular research project can accomplish with respect to a particular issue.
Do not approach communities with a topic and a fully developed research plan that they have had no role in co-creating. Reaching out to communities only when you need their help recruiting participants is not reflective of community-engaged research. Framing research as community-engaged when it is not will reinforce the impression that research is an extractive and exploitative activity with little or no relevance or benefit to them.
Establish shared purposes and goals.
Come to a shared understanding of each other’s needs, goals, available resources, capacities, and timelines. Each side of the community-academic partnership should develop an appreciation for the opportunities, resources, pressures, and constraints experienced by the partners. Collaboratively work toward a shared purpose, common goals, and a plan for achieving them.
Collaborate in all aspects of the work.
Involve community members as equal partners in every step of the research process, from establishing research questions to data interpretation, dissemination, and use. Although not all community partners will choose to be deeply engaged in every stage of the research process, it is critical to explicitly invite participation at each stage and provide partners the resources needed to participate if they choose. If community partners are interested in being involved in certain stages of the work but don't feel they have the necessary expertise, offer capacity-building opportunities so they can.
Remove barriers to participation of community partners.
Hold meetings at times and places that are convenient and comfortable for them, assisting with transportation and childcare, removing language barriers, and avoiding academic jargon. Provide introductory training in research topics to facilitate more informed and meaningful participation of community members in the research process.
Share power and resources equitably.
In CER, community members should have as much say in decisions as researchers, if not more. Structure steering committees so that community members have as many seats and votes (or more) as researchers.
To avoid perpetuating historical inequities, make sure to include fair compensation for the time and expertise of community partners and members in the project budget. Researchers should not ask members of marginalized communities to volunteer their time.
If community partner organizations are responsible for parts of the collective work, make sure this is reflected in the project budget.
View project budgets as opportunities to hire, train, and develop the career prospects of community members.
Establish formal agreements.
Partnership agreements are tools for formalizing and making explicit commitments to collaborative and equitable partnership processes and outcomes. Establish formal agreements that address:
- research ethics
- partners’ roles and responsibilities
- distribution of project resources
- data access and ownership
- dissemination of results
- conflict resolution
Discussing these topics and coming to an agreement early on increases transparency and trust and reduces the potential for misunderstandings and disruptions to relationships.
Recognize and honor the diverse assets and expertise present in all communities.
Any successful community change initiative must mobilize these assets, such as individual skills, social capital, organizational/institutional resources.
Honor community members as holders of unique and valuable information. Listen often, carefully, and with an open mind. Compensate community partners generously for sharing their expertise.
Structure the partnership as a co-learning process.
Communication should be bidirectional, with all partners viewed as having expertise to share. All partners learn from each other.
The collective understanding partners achieve through working together should be viewed as a joint creation for which they share responsibility. This collective responsibility should be reflected when credit is assigned for collaboratively created products (e.g., publications, presentations, communications for public audiences).
Maintain open, honest, and inclusive communication.
Avoid using exclusionary or alienating language and remove language barriers.
Don’t rush the process. Move at a pace that allows everyone to understand and to be heard.
Be open to critical and constructive feedback from partners. Respond with grace and gratitude.
Be flexible and responsive to community needs, urgent priorities, and timelines.
Recognize that academic and community timelines are often incompatible. Alert partners well in advance of hard deadlines and collaboratively plan how to work around them.
Commit to a long-term perspective and engagement.
Community change takes time and will not likely occur to the extent desired within the time frame of a 3–5-year funded research project. Partners, therefore, need to adopt a long-term perspective to the partnership and commit to sustaining the work beyond the initial funding cycle.
Explicitly address the contributions of intersecting identities to inequities.
Any CER that does not explicitly attend to the intersecting contributions of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, disability, age, etc., to inequities in the observed outcomes may perpetuate those very inequities.
In data analysis, do not rely on measures of central tendency for key outcomes. Not all programs serve all people equally well; many exacerbate existing inequities. Break key outcomes out by relevant demographic categories and analyze upstream, systemic, or structural roots of inequities.
Monitor and evaluate partnership processes and outcomes.
Co-create a transparent process for evaluating project and partnership implementation, processes, outputs, outcomes, and impacts based on evaluative criteria that reflect partners' core values.
Co-construct an evaluation process that reflects the inclusive and participatory nature of the research itself, from selecting key evaluation questions to the interpretation, dissemination, and use of evaluation findings.
Include indicators of success related to the sustainment of the partnership and the work.
