Learn how you can use community-engaged and participatory methods to include communities as partners and fellow experts in your research, policymaking, or program planning.
Getting Started
What Are Community-Engaged Methods?
Community-engaged methods were created by and for communities, particularly Black, Indigenous, and Latine communities, to assert their right to be part of decisions that affect their lives. By including people with lived experience as experts and decisionmakers, researchers, practitioners, and policymakers can more equitably partner with communities to change the systems that negatively impact their lives.
Community-Engaged Methods Model
An infographic outlining the principles of community engagement, relevant changemakers, and actions that can drive long-term impacts.
What Is Positionality?
Reflecting on your positionality—or identities, power, and privileges in relation to your work and the communities you work with—is the first step in addressing power imbalances within community partnerships.
How to Build Partnerships
How to Build Community Partnerships
Best practices for researchers, policymakers, and service providers interested in building equitable, sustained relationships with community members.
How to Equitably Compensate Community Partners
Practical guidance for creating an equitable compensation plan for participatory work and addressing common compensation challenges.
Driving Racial Equity Through Community Engagement
How local governments and researchers can catalyze more equitable public policies, programs, and investments by sharing power with community partners.
Community Engagement Approaches
How to Form a Community Advisory Board
Best practices for creating a community advisory board, including budgeting and compensation guidance.
How to Create Surveys Using Community-Engaged Methods
Methods to incorporate community input and lived experiences into survey design, analysis, and dissemination.
How to Use Participatory Methods in Quantitative Research
Collaborating with community members with lived experience can increase the rigor and policy relevance of quantitative research.
Using Data Walks to Review Data in Partnership with Communities
Resources for hosting a virtual or in-person data discussion to analyze data, share findings, or plan programs in collaboration with community members.
Collaborating with Specific Communities
Youth Engagement in Policy, Research, and Practice
Tools to authentically engage young people in participatory research, policy design, or program evaluation in way that is mutually beneficial.
Trauma-Informed Community Engagement
A framework for collaborating with communities who have experienced collective trauma that builds on community assets, aspirations, and priorities.
Conducting Participatory Research in Prisons
Participatory research methods can help build transparency and accountability for people confined and working in prisons.