Participatory Action Research as a Model for Conducting Family Research

We discuss a participatory action research (PAR) approach to conducting family research. We conceptualize participatory action research as a collaborative process among researchers and stakeholders throughout the entire research sequence. Based on our five years of implementing PAR, we describe potential PAR advantages and challenges that need to be documented in future research. We propose a model of PAR implementation levels including the options of family members as research leaders and researchers as ongoing advisors, researchers and family members as coresearchers, and researchers as leaders, and family members as ongoing advisors. Finally, we discuss key implementation issues (i.e., defining stakeholders to include in the PAR process, maximizing benefits and minimizing drawbacks of diverse expertise, and addressing logistical considerations) with suggestions for effectively addressing them.