Participatory action research with and within community activist groups: Capturing the collective experience of Ireland’s Community and Voluntary Pillar in social partnership

Industrial designers' thinking in the stage of concept generation for social design: themes, strategies and modes

“…The social design topics (Akdur & Kayga, 2019 ) include but are not limited to: (1) working for small community, especially the rural area (Wang et al, 2016 ) or local community (Lange et al, 2014 ); valuing the use of local intelligence or seeking "low budget and hence low technology solutions supported by local creativity and innovation" (Szentpéteri, 2009 ); (2) vulnerable groups like the homeless people (Melles & Howard, 2012 ) and confined social group; (3) global issues (Philips et al, 2016 ). Designers are encouraged to work together with multi-faceted stakeholders (DiSalvo et al, 2011 ) such as social innovation platforms (Yang & Sung, 2016 ), local partners (Gaudio et al, 2016 ), or the government, industry organizations, and even civil society organizations (Carney et al, 2012 ). In order to "support the contextual understanding of the communities that participate in research" (Miettinen & Sarantou, 2017 , p. 7), designers are recommended to adopt ethnographic methods such as participant observation, group interviews, photograph and video documentation (Miettinen & Sarantou, 2017 ).…”

Ethics in Political Science Research

“…Action research relating to political matters is also increasingly relevant, with studies conducted on topics like political activism (Langdon and Larweh 2015;Carr 2012;Yorks et al 2008), national and international NGOs (Glenzer et al 2015), civic participation (Wakeford et al 2015), governmental actors (Rasheli 2017), and policy development (Carney et al 2012;Stringer 2008). Action research is not a method in itself, but rather a family of methods with roots in different disciplines and including a variety of approaches.…”

'Protecting the most vulnerable' in an economic crisis: a participatory study of civil society organisations in Ireland

“…In this study, the reflective aspect of PAR was useful as it enabled participant organisations to reflect on their reactions to a rapidly changing policy environment as the recession deepened (Carney et al, 2012). This paper concentrates on CSOs' narration of how their priorities and strategies adapted from one of implementing an agreed social reform programme to the more immediate task of protecting social welfare recipients during an economic crisis.…”