What does it mean to conduct participatory research with Indigenous peoples? : a lexical review

Ann Dadich, Loretta Moore, Valsamma Eapen

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

27 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Background: To better understand and promote public health, participatory research with Indigenous peoples represents recommended practice, worldwide. However, due to the different ways such research is referred to, described, and used, it is unclear what might (and might not) warrant the term when collaborating with Indigenous peoples. As such, this article expands conceptual understandings of participatory research with Indigenous peoples, across timelines and regions. Method: Following a systematic search of 29 academic databases in April 2018, a lexical analysis of the methods sections was conducted, which were sourced from 161 publications across 107 journals. Results: The active involvement of Indigenous peoples in research that is expressly participatory is limited across all project phases. This might be because the ways in which Indigenous peoples were involved throughout were not reported – however, it might also be because Indigenous peoples were not involved in all project phases. Furthermore, descriptions differ by study location and publication timeframe – notably, studies in the region of the Americas chiefly refer to pandemics, surveyors, and art; and those published in the last two decades have given primacy to artifacts of interest. Conclusions: Findings from this corpus of data suggest participatory research with Indigenous peoples is not always described across different project phases; furthermore, it differs according to study location and publication timeframe. This offers considerable opportunity to further this important research area via alternative methodologies that award primacy to Indigenous expertise and agency.
Original languageEnglish
Article number1388
Number of pages13
JournalBMC Public Health
Volume19
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2019

Open Access - Access Right Statement

© The Author(s). 2019 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

Keywords

  • indigenous peoples
  • participant observation
  • public health

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'What does it mean to conduct participatory research with Indigenous peoples? : a lexical review'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this