Community Concept Drawing: A Participatory Visual Method for Incorporating Local Knowledge into Conceptualization

Concepts can provide researchers and communities with common ground for communicating and building understandings about the world. However, researchers who engage with communities often encounter unexpected interpretations of concepts in the field. This article introduces Community Concept Drawing (CCD), a participatory visual method aimed at facilitating a deep understanding of how local communities make sense of complex concepts often central to social research. We present the methodological foundations, protocol, and utility of CCD while drawing examples from our case studies in Senegal, Nepal, Morocco, and Kenya to examine the concept of empowerment. While CCD was created to open opportunities for studying empowerment within the field of international development, this article concludes by offering applications for using CCD to examine other concepts in various fields of study.