Empowerment

An ethical stance in qualitative research is to create an empowering space in which research participants share power with researchers. Empowering methodologies have the ability to promote social transformation by turning upside down the traditional hegemonic relationship between the researcher and the researched.

Researchers can move toward equalizing the inherent power differential in their relationship with research participants by paying attention to issues of voice, interpretation, interactions, dialogue, and reflexivity; by making a conscious effort to include the voice and feedback of all system of care participants; and by seeking to understand participants' own meanings and interpretations and using these interpretations of reality rather than their own. Empowering methodologies have the ability to represent multiple voices in a collaborative co-constructed manner. However, there is a difference between voice and empowerment. It is certainly possible to include participants' voices in a research project but to still not empower participants.

Empowering research takes place in collaborative dialogic processes that examine the research relationship itself and seek to understand the role of the researcher and the researched as co-participants in the research process. In addition, methodologies that let research participants have a say in how the research is conducted by exerting or influencing control over the conversations have the potential to tilt the balance of power in the research relationship from the researcher to the participants. Participatory action research is an example of one methodology that attempts to break down power relationships between the researcher and the researched by letting the stakeholders define the problem and work toward solutions. True participant empowerment would imply giving research participants status that is fully equal to that of researchers. Creating full empowerment in a research relationship requires major shifts in thinking and behaving—inviting participants to formulate the original questions, design the methodology, facilitate the data collection, and lead the analysis efforts. It might require moving the research into the community. It most certainly requires disengagement on the part of “professional” researchers to allow “nonprofessional” researchers room to engage. This is not an easy task. Professional researchers must be willing to let go—to step away from the process—so as to open a space for the other participants to have power.

Therefore, although participant empowerment is certainly a worthy and ethical goal of qualitative research, full empowerment of participants is almost impossible. Inviting people to participate in research that has already been designed, organized, and set up by professional researchers will not likely succeed in truly affecting the power relationship inherent in a research project. Research findings written for the academy marginalize and subordinate voices that are not academic. Thus, experience has shown that, despite attempts to empower participants as co-researchers, participants seem to experience critical homeostasis—the return to traditional power dynamics in the researcher – researched role.