At the table or on the menu: Engaging the community in research

Community engaged or participatory research is a theoretical and practical framework of collaboration between a community and a research team to answer a question of mutual interest. The experimental factors from identification of the research question, identification of the group, and identification of the objects of measurement through the dissemination of the results are ideally a collaborative and iterative process between the community and the research team. This research method can be challenging to orchestrate. However, without ongoing conversations throughout the experimental process between the community of practice and the research team the data gathered may have limited practical use to the community, may misinterpret practices within the community or may inadvertently denigrate typical behavior in the community as dysfunctional or disordered. The presented work describes one approach to engage communities as active participants in the research process from problem identification through dissemination of the results. The methods used for engaging community participants in both a language and an acoustic phonetic study will be shared. Results will be discussed in terms of experimental outcomes, community perspective, and community benefit.