With the Handbook of Action Research hailed as a turning point in how action research is framed and understood by scholars, this student edition has been structured to provide an easy inroad into the field for researchers and students. It includes concise chapter summaries and an informative introduction that draws together the different strands of action research and reveals their diverse applications as well as their interrelations. Divided into four parts, there are important themes of thinking and practice running throughout.

Technical problems require technical solutions that are innovative, simple, cheap, robust and easy to maintain. This book lists 100 winning inventions in the first International Inventors Award competition, organized in Stockholm.

In the early 1970s, a group of Colombian intellectuals led by the pioneering sociologist Orlando Fals Borda created a research-activist collective called La Rosca de Investigación y Acción Social (Circle of Research and Social Action). Combining sociological and historical research with a firm commitment to grassroots social movements, Fals Borda and his colleagues collaborated with indigenous and peasant organizations throughout Colombia. In Cowards Don’t Make History Joanne Rappaport examines the development of participatory action research on the Caribbean coast, highlighting Fals Borda’s rejection of traditional positivist research frameworks in favor of sharing his own authority as a researcher with peasant activists. Fals Borda and his colleagues inserted themselves as researcher-activists into the activities of the National Association of Peasant Users, coordinated research priorities with its leaders, studied the history of peasant struggles, and, in collaboration with peasant researchers, prepared accessible materials for an organizational readership, thereby transforming research into a political organizing tool. Rappaport shows how the fundamental concepts of participatory action research as they were framed by Fals Borda continue to be relevant to engaged social scientists and other researchers in Latin America and beyond.

Examine alternative strategies to resolving important Latino social issues! Latino Social Policy: A Participatory Research Model examines the failure of traditional research methods to address major social needs in Latino communities, promoting instead a participatory/action approach to research that is socially—and scientifically—meaningful. Experts from a variety of disciplines focus on nontraditional strategies that engage community residents in community-research projects, shortening the distance between the researcher and the “subject.” This unique book recounts lessons learned on conducting Participatory Action Research (PAR) in Latino communities using techniques based on anthropology, education, community health and evaluation, and urban planning. Latino Social Policy: A Participatory Research Model addresses non-traditional methods of reducing the tension between the reality of interaction with the subject community and the academic training structures used by researchers. The book promotes a new vision and practice of research design in which the “subject” is central to the process, advocating a participatory approach to produce qualitatively different research based on community identified problems and needs. Contributors examine the value of integrating local knowledge, language, and culture into the methodological design, the ethics of conducting research in Latino communities, and the internal conflicts Chicana/o researchers face within their profession and in the field. Topics addressed in Latino Social Policy: A Participatory Research Model include: community health and Central Americans in Los Angeles ethnography and substance abuse among transnational Mexican farmworkers identity and field research in Mexico the Latino Coalition for a New Los Angeles (LCNLA) researcher/community partnerships and much more! Latino Social Policy: A Participatory Research Model includes case studies, ethnographies, and vignettes that illustrate participatory approaches and outcomes in Latino research. The book is equally valuable as a textbook for academics and students working in the social sciences, public policy, and urban planning, and as a professional guide for community leaders and organizations interested in developing research partnerships.

This volume presents a project of empirical research on issues of theology, sexuality, and reproductive health and rights. It was carried out by researchers from two theological institutions in Brazil and Colombia in close contact with the grassroots in various civil-society organizations. Numerous studies at twenty-six Latin American institutions on the relation between theology and HIV/AIDS prepared the way for this project. It promotes and applies methodologies for Latin American popular education and participatory action research (PAR). While the project was finalized long before the COVID-19 pandemic hit Latin America and the world, the pandemic gave fresh evidence of the relevance of the project. The present volume is the English translation of the initial Portuguese and Spanish reports about the project, enriched with a new preface. The editors are delighted that this translation will help spread the vital insights from this research to a wider and global readership.