Sharing our insights about community-driven research

Introduction

It’s no secret that everything the Active Quarter partnership seeks to achieve is thoroughly community-led – and that’s the way it should be.

In our mission to make outdoor spaces easier to access (and more enjoyable to visit), we’ve always taken care to produce proposals, funding bids, and infrastructure recommendations that are driven by research and focussed fully on the needs of local Northampton residents.

We believe working like this is the right thing to do, but it isn’t always easy to do. We all have different lifestyles, different priorities, and different ambitions. So, understanding the views of a community in its broadest sense requires a lot of work.

Additionally, encouraging people to engage in research, particularly given the busy lives many lead, is also challenging.

To help us gather and understand the views of Northampton residents better, we have frequently conducted ‘intercept go-along’ interviews in public spaces.

'Intercept go-along' interviews

‘Intercept go-along’ interviews are a more natural way of gathering a community’s views. They are conducted on location, in a place that is relevant to the insight being gathered. For example, research about public parks would be gathered in the park itself.

The idea behind this is that ‘intercept go-along’ interviews can encourage more natural, authentic responses – as participants experience the very thing they’re talking about. Researchers can also better understand the experiences being shared because, for a time, they’re a part of those experiences too. The physical environment, too, might also prompt insights otherwise forgotten if research was taking place elsewhere (e.g., through a survey or consultation meeting at a community centre).

Supporting Active Quarter research

This research method has proved genuinely useful to the Active Quarter partnership. Previously, ‘intercept go-along’ interviews have supported our investigations into the significance of urban parks and the impact of improved pathways around Delapre Park.

Walking along with participants to understand their experiences of new wayfinding signs in Delapre Park.

Sharing reflections

However, despite their usefulness, we found that there isn’t much support available for others who wish to use this method themselves. This applies as equally to academic researchers as it does to community organisations on a fact-finding mission.

So, in response to this, authors Jack Hardwicke, Kimberley Hill & Declan Ryan have written an article that aims to outline more practically “what we actually did and how this actually went”. The article, published in the Cities & Health journal, offers some honest reflections on the experience of conducting these ‘intercept go-along’ interviews – and explains the thinking behind choosing this method of research.

Read the full article

If you are interested in how community-driven research can support organisations and decision-makers to make better public health decisions, we hope reading this article will be a great starting point for you. It provides a useful introduction to:

• How the authors adapted ‘go along’ interviews to better suit their needs
• Why these adaptations could be useful for urban health research
• How the authors planned and set-up their research – and how it went
• Their experiences recording and analysing the data collected.

You can download and read the full article for free using the link below. The authors – and the Active Quarter partnership as a whole – hope that sharing our experiences will encourage others to try this research approach themselves. And we look forward to further developing the ‘go along’ method ourselves, as we continue to campaign for local outdoor spaces that benefit everybody.