APRD: action partnership research design: reimagining the role of the user in library and information science research
| Date | 16 April 2024 |
| Pages | 1211-1237 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-05-2023-0090 |
| Published date | 16 April 2024 |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Records management & preservation,Document management,Classification & cataloguing,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Scholarly communications/publishing,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
| Author | Valerie Nesset,Elisabeth C. Davis,Nicholas Vanderschantz,Owen Stewart-Robertson |
APRD: action partnership research
design: reimagining the role
of the user in library and
information science research
Valerie Nesset
Department of Information Science, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York, USA
Elisabeth C. Davis
University at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York, USA
Nicholas Vanderschantz
The University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand, and
Owen Stewart-Robertson
School of Information Studies, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
Abstract
Purpose –Responding to the continuing separation of participants and researchers in LIS participatory
research, a new methodology is proposed: action partnership research design (APRD). It is asserted that APRD
can mitigate or remove the hierarchical structures often inherent in the research process, thus allowing for
equal contribution from all.
Design/methodology/approach –Building on the bonded design (BD) methodology and informed by a
scoping literature review conducted by the same authors, APRD is a human-centered research approach with
the goal of empowering and valuing community partnerships. APRD originates from research investigating
the use of participatory design methods to foster collaboration between two potentially disparate groups,
firstly with adult researchers/designers and elementary school children, and secondly with university faculty
and IT professionals.
Findings –To achieve this goal, in addition to BD techniques, APRD draws inspiration from elements of
indigenous and decolonization research methodologies, particularly those with an emphasis on destabilizing
power hierarchies and involving research participants as full partners.
Originality/value –APRD, which emerged from findings from previous participatory design studies,
especially those of BD, is based on the premise of partnership, recognizing that each member of a design team,
whether researcher or participant/user, has unique expertise to contribute. By considering participants/users
as full research partners, APRD aims to flatten the hierarchies exhibited in some LIS participatory research
methodologies, where participants are treated more like research subjects than partners.
Keywords Research methods, Participatory design, Codesign, APRD
Paper type Article
Introduction
In the early to mid-1980s, a paradigm shift within the library and information science
discipline towards more user-centered research (e.g. information behavior) began to take
shape. This shift strongly impacted established research methodologies, especially in areas
such as system design, by recognizing users as active participants (e.g. Bawden, 2006;
Dalrymple, 2001;Dora and Kumar, 2020;Gonz
alez-Teruel and Abad-Garc
ıa, 2007;Hewins,
Action
partnership
research
design
1211
The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support of the Institute of Museum and Library
Services (IMLS), Grant RE-18-19-0072.
We declare that we have no significant competing financial, professional or personal interests that
might have influenced the performance or presentation of the work described in this manuscript.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0022-0418.htm
Received 11 May 2023
Revised 7 March 2024
Accepted 9 March 2024
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 80 No. 6, 2024
pp. 1211-1237
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/JD-05-2023-0090
1990;Julien and Duggan, 1996;Nesset and Large, 2004;Powell, 1999;Talja and Hartel, 2007;
Wilson, 1994). However, in many of these studies, research participants (typically called
“users”in the literature) were still not actively included in all aspects of the research (Nesset
et al., 2024). While participatory approaches have attempted to address this discord, there still
appears to be considerable work to do in centering “users”in such research. Although much
library and information science (LIS) literature applauds the rise of user-focused research,
users are still often relegated to performing passive roles, becoming subjects of the research
instead of active participants. Moreover, when users do take on active roles, it is often only in
specific stages of the research, not the entire process (Dervin and Nilan, 1986;Gonz
alez-Teruel
and Abad-Garc
ıa, 2007;Hartel, 2018;Hepworth et al., 2014;Luca and Ulyannikova, 2020;
Olsson, 2009;Talja and Hartel, 2007), and there often remains an inherent hierarchical
structure with the researcher(s) at the top. These hierarchies may also be intensified by the
research methods and terminologies used and by the timelines applied to the research by the
researchers. For example, simply by using the common moniker “user”to denote non-
researcher participants, an inherent separation between participants and researchers is
introduced, potentially diminishing their contributions to the research process.
When discussing an adapted research methodology that centers around the role of users
(we prefer to use the term, “research participants,”but in the LIS literature, “user(s)”is the
name most often employed and for purposes of clarity, the term “user”will be used in this
article when discussing prior research), it seems important to define the term first. Drawing
from the results of a scoping literature review exploring the role of the user/research
participant in LIS participatory research design (Nesset et al., 2024), we consider a user to be
an individual who is “a living, breathing person”(Wilson, 2008, p. 457) who interacts with
different information systems seeking, utilizing and creating information (Wu, 2005).
It should be noted, however, that we suggest a more explicit definition of “information
system”that is format-independent and thus includes print, electronic and human systems.
Given the inclusion of human information “systems”in our definition, for the purposes of this
paper, therefore, we go beyond the individual level to include users as those who interact
within a group comprised of themselves and researchers, all of whom act as sources of
information throughout the research process. Thus, in the spirit of this definition, like Clarke
(2018,2020), we prefer to use the term “human-centered”rather than “user-centered”research.
In proposing a revised research methodology that furthers the human-centered paradigm, the
authors recognize the potential saturation (Hartel, 2018,2019) of the LIS field with calls for new
paradigms and shifts (e.g. Cox and Tam, 2018;Dalrymple, 2001;Dervin and Nilan, 1986;Gonz
alez-
Teruel and Abad-Garc
ıa, 2007;Park, 1994;Polkinghorne and Given, 2021). These postulations
exist despite lack of consensus around what truly constitutes a shift or paradigm or around the
accomplishment of their supposed claims and objectives (Gatten, 1991;Hjørland, 2005a,b;Talja
and Hartel, 2007). From this standpoint, the authors suggest a move toward research methods
fusing elements of recognized participatory methodologies such as participatory design (PD),
participatory action research (PAR) and community-based participatory research (CBPR), along
with indigenous and decolonial approaches. We assert that these methodologies offer avenues for
bridging the potential divide between participant and researcher in the design of services and
systems and suggest opportunities for building new understandings of human information
behaviors and human interactions with information technology and services.
Recognizing the importance of the approaches mentioned above and based on extensive
experience using participatory design (e.g. Large et al., 2004;Nesset et al., 2022) and a scoping
literature review on the role of the user in LIS participatory research (Nesset et al., 2024), we
introduce another conceptual and methodological research approach, termed “action
partnership research design”(APRD). APRD emerged directly from the findings of
research studies using the participatory research methodology bonded design (BD) (Nesset
and Bible, 2018a,2019;Nesset et al., 2020) as a framework for collecting data on the efficacy of
JD
80,6
1212
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