Review of Methodological Approaches to Community-Based Research, by eonard A Jason and David S Glenwick (Editors)

In times like ours with increasing funding competition, the efforts of community programs must be rigorously evaluated. To accomplish this, we need to employ multiple strategies involving strong narrative and sophisticated statistical and graphical tools, and this approach will allow us to better appreciate and understand the meaning and effectiveness of our social and community interventions. Methodological Approaches to Community-Based Research, edited by Leonard A. Jason and David S. Glenwick, unleashes the firepower of academic expertise as it demystifies the sophisticated science of today’s community research. This volume covers history, values, principles, and standards of research methods with 12 chapters of examples of thoughtful, adventurous community research. Methodological Approaches to Community-Based Research challenges the ever-evolving community research field to expand its armament of tools and to consider these innovative qualitative and quantitative methods. This compendium of methodological pluralism and mixed-methods research offers rich examples of each type of research methodology and data sets available online for demonstration. Lorion and Kelly provide thoughtful analyses in the foreword and afterword and help readers better understand the context of the chapters and the overall volume. The book’s first chapter, by the editors, offers a concise overview informing potential producers and consumers of research about integrative methods for both quantitative and qualitative research. It traces the prevention model from its evolution of health and clinical interventions to a social change ecological perspective. Plural research methods have evolved to aid in understanding individual and social problems from an environmental context. The next chapter grounds theoretical and practical perspectives for mixed-methods research. It examines the scientific challenge between subjective and objective reality examining the nature of truth. How can we consider contemporary research without Dewey’s pragmatism enlightening us as to how individual knowledge develops from a series of interactions