The real deal in community research
by Kelly Stone
Spending the day on the end of a shovel is all in a day’s research for Professor Bernard Guerin.
Prof Guerin stands by community participation research methods but admits they take time.
"The best way to find out what people do, say, think, or believe, is to work alongside them while observing and talking informally to them - many times over if possible," he said.
"In this way, research is nothing but an extension of what we do in real life but it has to be done systematically and with documentation, because that’s what makes it research."
Prof Guerin says you can never tell what participatory community
research methods might involve – including a day’s shovelling.
"One day in Nepabunna, I had organised with the Council Chair to talk but he announced that he had to dig post holes for a new deck on the Community Hall," he said.
"Instead of bemoaning the fact that my interview was ruined, I went out with him and spent the day digging. At the same time, we were able to talk all day and I could also join in conversations with all the people who approached him about community matters that day. And we laid the foundation for what is now a very nice deck area for community events."
While not right for all research questions, when there are broad issues about social and cultural life, or groups who are suspicious of quick research methods, Prof Guerin believes community participation research methods are the way to go.
"It is only when you have spent time with people, earned their trust through real actions rather than promises, and you have a chance for iterative informal questioning about topics, that you really find out what is going on. These are situations where surveys or even interviews would not make the grade," he said.
Prof Guerin has been at UniSA for more than three years now since returning from New Zealand to take up a position in the School of Psychology, Social Work and Social Policy. For 15 years in New Zealand he worked alongside Maori colleagues looking at children’s safety, health, and the mobility of Maori in remote areas, as well as a nine-year project working closely alongside a Somali refugee community.
Since being back in Australia, new community research projects have been developed, mostly working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. With the Desert Knowledge CRC, Prof Guerin and his wife Pauline Guerin from Flinders University, have been the SA site team for a project looking at the sustainability of remote communities. They have worked alongside communities in Pukatja (APY Lands) and Nepabunna (Northern Flinders Ranges).
Prof Guerin said while some people in government and the public believed that small remote communities should be shut down, the project argues that remote communities are cultural and spiritual hubs for a much larger number of people living elsewhere, and the Australian Census does not reflect the true size of these communities.
Prof Guerin also has two grants from the Australian Research Council and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, to look at mental health such as social health in remote Indigenous communities, working with a team including Deirdre Tedmanson from UniSA’s School of Psychology, Social Work and Social Policy; Pauline Guerin, at Flinders University; and Yvonne Clark at the University of Adelaide.
"This is again an area of research in which straight interviews or surveys cannot get the information you need, so we are using participatory community research methods," Prof Guerin said.
"I sometimes describe these methods as ‘hanging out and yarning’ but what you find out is more reliable and information that you have checked several times over and with different people, rather than just what you hear over the course of a single standard interview."
Prof Guerin said he had also been lucky enough to be on a UniSA committee examining the notion of Community Engaged Scholars and how they can get better institutional recognition.
"Having the University engaged with communities has always been a key goal at UniSA," he said.
"This form of research is not about one person. I rely on the goodwill of community members who often go out on a limb for me, fellow colleagues who share their networking and contacts, and co-researchers and research students. I’m hoping we can find new ways to reward all of those people so UniSA can maintain its commitment and leading edge in engaging with communities."