What is the purpose of community-based research?

One of the persistent questions I hear in talking with museum folks goes, roughly, like this:

I worry that we might be duplicating the work of other organizations in our community. If we had a more comprehensive view of our community’s needs and could partner with other local organizations, would we have greater impact?

That's not an exact quote — More like a mash-up of an overall feeling of uncertainty that I've gathered from people here and there, which makes me suspicious. If I haven't exactly heard some form of this question come from an actual person's throat, is this a real thought/question/uncertainty that people have, or is this just me trying to justify pursuing a question that I'm interested in?

I'm not sure, but I know others are looking into this sort of question. For example, Susie Wilkening offers community-based research projects. If someone like her is investing time and attention on this sort of question, it's a safer bet that it's a question that people other than me are interested in, even if they don't frame it exactly the way I would.

Another way to frame the question/uncertainty might be:

I worry that we're just talking the talk when we say we're serving our community or that our community is important to us? Can we demonstrate that we're being of service?

Now, that's a statement I can match a face and name to. (If you're reading this, I promise it's not you that I'm thinking of, but if you thought for a second I was quoting you, do let me know!)

For my part, I've wondered what organizations might have to gain from progress-space research that's focused on particular communities. (In this case, I'm thinking of “communities” as being defined by location — more on that in a minute.) 

In other words, what would happen if the local library, historical society, art museum, and aquarium came together to create mental models?

If you're like me, you might be thinking, "Wait — do historical societies and aquariums really share the same audiences?"

I agree and this is one reason why I'm unsure about the idea of "community-based research". 

Let's revisit that document by Susie Wilkening:

Research continually reinforces that when cultural and lifelong learning organizations in a community work together, communities are stronger…as well as the individual organizations in a community.

I'm not calling into question whether that's true — I'm only highlighting that bit because it got me thinking more deliberately about ways to define "community-based research". 

Local Community Research

The idea of local organizations working together to study how they might better serve a group of humans is appealing — Benefits of this local-community research include:

• Research becomes more accessible to organizations with smaller budgets

• Research becomes a vehicle for collaboration between organizations that might not otherwise happen

• Leaders can make more informed decisions together as to who might be best suited to support community members with new or improved programs

• Community members are better supported by the cultural organizations they can visit regularly

So, a number of cultural organizations in, say, Raleigh, North Carolina come together and pursue a progress-space research study and use the resulting opportunity maps to identify gaps in support for people they support.

The objection that comes to mind for me is that this presumes that location matters to people — that visiting a place in person is required or even desirable for the people you're trying to support. 

Of course, if we're talking about school groups, that's still true. Kids are going to get on a bus and go on field trips. But that's in part because kids aren't choosing the solution (e.g., going to a museum vs watching Youtube to learn something new), teachers and administrators are deciding all that for them.

So, if we're not studying school kids in our community-based research, how relevant is the idea of a community as being defined by location?

Adults set their own goals and find their own solutions to make progress toward those goals — But let's revisit that in a minute. 

Community as mission/categorical

If our purpose in pursuing something like community-based research is to realize some of those benefits I listed above, then another approach would be for organizations of similar kind to band together, regardless of their location. 

The assumption in this case is that, for example, historic houses, history museums, and historical societies all have enough in common that studying the humans they support would allow them to identify patterns and suggest some particular course of action. 

But that still feels misguided to me — or at least it's worth acknowledging the limitations. 

Imagine all the grocery stores across the country coming together to study grocery store shoppers. They'd probably learn some interesting things — I have to think some opportunities to improve would emerge — but they wouldn't like get to any underlying reasons as to why people go to the grocery store vs growing vegetables in the backyard vs having groceries delivered to their homes. The mission-centric approach to community research would never lead Trader Joe's to think of OKCupid as a competitor. (I gather that some humans go to the grocery store to find other humans to couple with.)

Community as goal-based

And that brings us to community research in terms of people's goals. The common thread here would be, to stick with our history example, "I want to become a historian."

Now, let's go back to our original definition of community as meaning local community. If the "cultural organizations" of Raleigh got together to study People Who Want To Become Historians — Well, that would be a hard sell to the local science museum or aquarium. And that's probably a good thing — Filtering by audience goals narrows our focus.

On the other hand, it may be hard to persuade administrators at the local library or history museum that they should consider partnering with a college in Arizona and a YouTuber in Austin to understand their audience.

"Local-community-based research" is… fine. 

Assuming the organizations can narrow their focus enough, they could be like the grocery stores who come together to identify some better practices.

But if the participating organizations' goals are more ambitious — if they want to get to why the people they hope to support are making particular choices and look at the world through their audience's point of view — then I'm not sure collaboration between local organizations is the answer. And that stinks because I love the idea of community-based research. 

What do you think? 

I'd love to be wrong — I'd love to hear a story of how a group of local cultural organizations came together and studied their audiences together and great things came of it. I'm sure those stories are out there. Let me know if you have one.

Send me a reply — or leave a comment, or share your feedback here.

Kyle

P.S. Our next MAP & Tell is this coming Thursday, and it's all about Listening. I hope you'll join us.