Who Knows Best? Using Participatory Action Research (PAR) as a Tool for Designing and Implementing Prison Programming

Participatory action research (PAR) is a methodology that emphasizes the importance and benefits of doing research with people rather than on people. A PAR approach prioritizes people-centered work that can help facilitate change within communities. Past work has utilized a PAR approach to research in corrections, but less is known about how PAR can be used as an intervention in prison. There are also certain aspects of the carceral setting which bring into question whether PAR would be as effective as it is in free communities. The current study uses data from semi-structured interviews with 200 incarcerated women in Arizona to explore whether incarcerated women perceive that including people in prison in the design and implementation of a program is going to enhance that program. Participants are presented with one of four vignettes describing a scenario in which new programs are brought to the prison. Vignettes contain a single variable measure who designed and taught the programs and had four conditions: correctional staff, incarcerated women, university researchers, or incarcerated women alongside university researchers (akin to a PAR scenario). A series of questions are asked after the scenario that measure perceptions of program quality. Results indicate mixed support for the PAR approach to programming and call for PAR researchers to be clear on the intended effects of the approach, particularly as it is applied to social change and developing programming in a prison environment.