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Table 7 Participatory Learning and Action research techniques

From: ‘Participation is integral’: understanding the levers and barriers to the implementation of community participation in primary healthcare: a qualitative study using normalisation process theory

Flexible brainstorming

Flexible brainstorming is a technique used to generate as many ideas as possible related to the research question and recording them on Post-its on a large chart. It is suitable for those with low literacy as there are options to use pictures from magazines, draw pictures or have the research team write or spell words for participants if needed.

Flexible brainstorming was used to generate data in responses to questions about participants’ understanding of the meaning and value of community participation, what motivates them to get involved in this work, what do they do to enact community participation and how they evaluate the work.

Card sort

A card sort can be used to begin the process of thematic co-analysis of the data developed in a flexible brainstorm. All information generated during flexible brainstorming is examined and organised by asking ‘what ideas belong together? How would you organise these so that they can be organised into meaningful “bundles”?’ Participants can move the material from the flexible brainstorming chart into themes, all the while explaining why these ideas belonged together and cross-checking with each other that they are satisfied with this organisation of ideas.

The card sort was used in focus groups to co-analyse the data generated in the flexible brainstorm above.

Responses to each question were discussed individually and organised into themes or ‘bundles’ of Post-its and pictures. Participants were asked to discuss ‘how do these ideas in question 1 fit together? What ideas belong together? what ideas are different? How can we group them together?’

In this way participants were co-analysing the data with each other and the researcher.