Iranian participatory research impacts: A knowledge translation perspective

Purpose: The aim of this study is to examine the impacts of Iranian participatory research in practice. Materials/methods: A review of participatory studies conducted to find out published articles (Persian or English) in Iran. The keywords “knowledge translation, knowledge utilization, participatory research, participatory action research, outcome assessment, impact assessment, results” were searched in several domestic and international databases such as Pubmed, Medline, Embase, Iranmedex, SID and Iranpsych. This study included papers published during 2006-2008, to ensure that enough time (ten years) had passed for changes to track the short and long-term effects of researches in the next part as a cross-sectional study. Results: The findings of the cross-sectional study indicated that the greatest changes occurred at participation (92.3%) and empowerment (76.9%) levels in people/ patients; participation and capacity building (38.5%) in researchers; participation and awareness (30.8%) in health care providers groups of stakeholders. Also, the highest scores were attributed to inter-sectoral collaboration (38.5%, 53.8%) and decision-making (30.8%, 38.5%) in health policy-makers and organizational managers, respectively. Conclusions: Community-based participatory research can have a great impact on community participation in the research process, as well as on capacity building and knowledge sharing among researchers. It can also have moderate effects on improving managerial decision-making and inter-sectoral collaboration among organizational managers. translation,