A dilemma encountered within the project concerned the need to meet project objectives relating to knowledge generation while avoiding the mere extraction of data from participants within the project. The objective of promoting the localisation of research projects and inclusivity within research projects has been increasingly prominent within the fields of humanitarian action and disaster management (Gaillard 2019). Commitment No. 4 of humanitarian scholars at the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit called for the “localisation of research projects within the regions and communities affected by emergencies” (Statement of Commitments from Humanitarian Scholars at World Humanitarian Summit 2016). Similarly, the Disaster Studies Manifesto, promulgated in 2019 by a range of disaster management researchers, calls in Section 3.6 for the deployment of “methods that enable and encourage local people to lead and critique enquiry and local scientific endeavours that provide maximum benefit to local researchers and the people who are the subjects of research.”Footnote 3 More broadly, the ethical principle of beneficence dictates that research undertaken ought to be beneficial to the persons concerned, not merely to the research team and/or the generation of knowledge (Constantin 2018; Ritchie et al. 2003). The twin objective of being beneficial to participants and local researchers has methodological implications for the actors involved in guiding and conducting the research. In this view, the ethical dimension permeates every aspect of methodology (Van Duijn and Hilhorst 2019).
In terms of the research methods deployed, the literature makes a strong argument for the value of participatory research as being:
…rooted in principles of justice and democracy…an inclusive, collaborative approach to research defined both by participation and a determination to produce knowledge in the interest of social change. (Torre et al. 2015: 540)
The PRUV project has occasionally encountered the familiar refrain from participants concerning the lack of feedback of results by research teams that had previously engaged in the same locale. For example, the coordinator of a community-based organisation active in one of the selected PRUV localities claimed during an interview conducted on 25 May 2016 that:
research projects have to take into account the vulnerability of the population and offer them something after they participate; they recount their lives and they open wounds.
Participatory research engages a wide range of data collection tools; two commonly advocated tools are transect walks and mapping exercises. Participatory methodology is considered to best contribute to an open dialogue, which would do less harm to the community, by providing it with tools that are useful in assessing their own progress and development.
This study developed an Urban Vulnerability Walk (UVW) for use in Indonesia and Colombia, which was adapted from Plan International’s Girls’ Safety Walk in Kenya. It was adapted to local considerations in each of the cities included within the PRUV project. The method yielded detailed information about how different groups of women, men, adolescent girls and boys view specific sites within informal urban settlements in the three case study cities. As an inherent part of the tool, these groups formulated separate recommendations for making improvements within the communities, and these recommendations can be used—in conjunction with the rest of the qualitative and quantitative data—to inform the community on their spatial vulnerabilities within urban areas and safe, transformative spaces of resilience within these communities. Particularly notable in the case of Indonesia was that at the beginning of the study participants assumed that the environment they lived in did not face challenges related to safety and security; after the study was conducted, they highlighted a range of environmental risks to their safety and security.
The Urban Vulnerability Walk (UVW) was paired with a social cartography, which is a mapping exercise aimed at obtaining an understanding of the risks, vulnerabilities and social assets within a community. The two methods were paired so as to use the second as a ‘reflective’ exercise for the first. The approaches to the deployment of this method varied across the three case studies to suit the realities of the local communities. In the Colombian case, both exercises were conducted months apart, with the mapping exercise undertaken in June 2017 and the walks undertaken in January and March 2018, as the latter focused especially on gender specificities. In both Jakarta and Nairobi, the exercises were conducted on the same day, which allowed participants to articulate more clearly their perceptions of the reality of the setting. In Jakarta conducting the mapping exercise after the urban vulnerability walk served to highlight risks and vulnerabilities that were not immediately apparent to the residents of the area. In Nairobi, the mapping exercise served as a useful springboard for discussion. Feedback from researchers found that it would have been particularly useful to have two mapping exercises, one before and one after, to measure potential shifts in awareness levels based on community perceptions. All three cases found, however, that the relationship between the social cartography and UVW created (1) a positive environment for open, relaxed, and inclusive discussion of somewhat difficult topics; (2) an awareness of urban vulnerabilities that had not been considered by participants prior to the study; and (3) a clear ‘mapping’ of where opportunities for change existed within these communities. The participatory nature of these exercises allowed communities not only to create visual maps of their communities but mental maps of what they would like these to look like and thus allowed them to focus on future action which need to be taken to achieve this. In so doing, a participatory action research approach was adopted (Kemmis and McTaggart 2005). This example highlights that the selection and design of participatory methods in collaboration with local actors has an important role in providing direct benefit to research participants and wider communities in emergency contexts as well as deeper insight into the phenomena under study, putting the community’s reality at the forefront of the research (Chambers 1997). While such enhanced engagement might enhance the utility of findings to local communities, it may well come at a cost in terms of generalisability. This highlights the potential tensions between academic organisations with their foremost concern for knowledge generation vis-à-vis NGOs with their foremost concern for the communities within which they work.
In terms of the engagement of local actors in the design and conduct of research projects, the ethical rationale for increased localisation and inclusivity contains both utilitarian and deontological dimensions. From a utilitarian perspective, research projects can benefit from “insiders” insofar as they tend to be better positioned to ask meaningful questions, understand non-verbal cues, have much easier access to the community under study and of course have a greater understanding of the cultural context. However, along with such advantages may come the possibility of bias and a cultural inability to ask certain questions which may be crucial to the study (Merriam et al. 2001). Participants can have concerns over confidentiality when insiders are involved in the research, particularly when discussing cultural taboos Liamputtong (2008). “Outsiders”, on the other hand, are thought to have difficulty in understanding the cultural significance of certain expressions, may be unable to read body language and may need much longer to build trust. Advantages are that the outsider may be less biased, non-aligned and able to gather more objective information. This view of the insider/outsider phenomenon may be too simplistic in that it does not take into consideration important factors such as power, positionality and representation (Dwyer and Buckle 2009). For example, a cultural ‘insider’ from a different social background, class and race to the community under study may have disadvantage over the outsider as, although the researcher may be from the same country, her daily reality will be very different, thus making trust harder to build. In fact, there is no solution to the insider/outsider dilemma, and the best that can be done, according to Liamputtong (ibid. 238), is “to reflect upon what gives the most in every single situation”. Set against this utilitarian approach to the insider-outsider approach is the intrinsic value placed on localisation, collaboration and inclusivity within the design and implementation of research projects as well as the communication of research findings.
Within each period of data collection, consideration was given to whether it was preferable to have an insider or an outsider conduct the research. The approach to the composition of the research team working directly with research participants varied across case studies with important implications in terms of joint ownership of the process. In the case of Jakarta, the research was solely conducted by Indonesian researchers due to political sensitivities arising from approaching elections at the time of data collection. In Nairobi and Soacha, a mix of non-Kenyans and non-Colombians collaborated with Kenyan and Colombian nationals respectively. In the three case study sites, where a choice in terms of the composition of the particular research team working directly with participants was available, the project generally was guided by partner NGOs working in the locality and the key informants, which included local government officials, social workers and teachers. This highlights the importance of stakeholder engagement in designing and implementing research projects. Where it is feasible to include affected populations within the design and implementation of research, the distinction between the researcher and the researched is further blurred (Hugman et al. 2011). This would also serve to ease the dilemma that might otherwise arise between the pursuit of research project objectives and producing direct benefits to participants.