Beyond service learning: The role of undergraduate students and community residents as resources for health equity research

Historically, undergraduate students and community residents have been underutilized in research. Community-based Participatory Research (CBPR) is enhanced by a bidirectional, collaborative learning process that can train future researchers and help sustain research activities in the community. In this presentation a team of a student from the University of Massachusetts Boston affiliated with the Gaston Institute and a community resident who is member of the Board of Directors of the Puerto Rican Cultural Center, Inc. will discuss their learning process from doing field research on eight Saturdays for a CBPR project in Springfield, MA. Using a bidirectional “learning by doing” method, teams comprised of one member from each institution enumerated randomly selected census blocks through participant observation. To capture their critical learning experiences, we recorded the debriefing session at the end of the research task and transcribed it. This transcription was downloaded into the NVIVO 9, and coded for emerging themes that highlight the need to move beyond the typical service-learning experience. Key to the successful experience of participants including the opportunity to interact with faculty members and researchers in the field, to contribute to developing strategies to improve field research procedures, and to reflect upon their experience with the research task that demystify the research process. These shared experiences created the opportunity to develop a sense of community and broke down barriers of traditional power structures among members of a research team.