Participatory Theory Building: A Methodological Review and Conceptualization
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background Historically, community members are not positioned as theory-builders in academia. With growing evidence on the utility of participatory- and inclusive-research methodologies, this study posits that participatory theory building, which promotes the perspectives, voices, and lived experiences of community members, can contribute to the reduction of inequalities.Purpose To assess the evidence base of existing peer-reviewed studies which involve participatory methodologies for academic theory-building, and, identifying potential best-practices.Methods A search for articles in the English language, framed in “participatory action research” and “grounded theory,” was conducted on PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus. Articles retrieved were categorized into research studies (n = 12) and review papers (n = 2).Results Existing peer-reviewed studies use both participatory action research and grounded theory as a foundation to explore participatory theory building. The degree of participation and theory building, however, varied widely across studies. Recurring methodological considerations are collated into tables.Discussion Participatory theory building presents value toward refining existing theories, fostering more community-engagement, and can lead to outputs that guide future research efforts.Translation to Health Education Practice As the evidence base suggests value in participatory theory building, key methodological considerations drawn from existing studies – ranging from sampling and recruitment to post-project evaluation – may inform future research.A AJHE Self-Study quiz is online for this article via the SHAPE America Online Institute (SAOI) http://portal.shapeamerica.org/trn-Webinars
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Direct model labels (unvalidated)
Per-model category and study-design labels from the labeling rounds. They are machine output, unvalidated, and the disagreement between models ships as data. No study design here is MEDLINE-validated yet.
| Model arm | Categories | Study design | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| gemma | Metaresearch Domain: Methods · Genre: Review About the Canadian research system: no · About a Canadian topic: no | Not applicable | low |
| gpt | no category Domain: not available · Genre: Review About the Canadian research system: no · About a Canadian topic: no | Other design | low |
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.171 | 0.200 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.006 | 0.006 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.031 | 0.036 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.006 | 0.012 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.014 | 0.013 |
| Open science | 0.007 | 0.010 |
| Research integrity | 0.005 | 0.006 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedLabeled directly by 2 models reading the full record.
The models disagree on parts of this classification; every voice is preserved in the section at the end of the page.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".