Principles in practice: reflections on a `postpositivist' approach to evaluation research

User participation is currently seen as an ethically appropriate way to proceed when researching disadvantaged groups and it is encouraged by funding agencies. However, the literature rarely discusses the methodological and practical implications for researchers attempting to incorporate user participation into evaluation studies which are informed from an epistemologically opposed (positivist) research paradigm. The paper explores this issue by drawing on the evaluation of a community-based smoking intervention to describe and reflect upon the recruitment, training and employment of local residents as survey interviewers. While the evaluation methodology adopts a quasi-experimental approach, the appointment of local residents as survey interviewers reflects an alternative (interpretive) research tradition. The combined strategy constitutes a postpositivist methodology in that it combines a data collection strategy more akin to interpretive social science while retaining a positivistic epistemological framework. The paper describes some logistics of this approach and problems encountered during the course of survey. While many of the problems described may be routinely associated (although seldom aired) with survey work, particularly in disadvantaged areas, the paper suggests they are also a function of the postpositivist research strategy which we adopted. The failure to involve interviewers in the conception and development of the evaluation meant that they lacked identification with our endeavour and this had practical implications for the survey interviewing. Although the survey was successfully executed and the employment of local residents was a valuable and worthwhile experience, the authors recognize that this narrow conception of user involvement meant that many of the potential benefits (both to the research and the participants) associated with participatory approaches were forfeited.