Here are examples of eight community led research projects for inspiration. These should help to give you an idea of potential themes and how they were turned into a research project. Each one shows how the community groups have worked with a researcher, and how their projects link to science.
You’ll be able to see that our definition of science is broad. It includes traditional science subjects as well as social sciences, psychology, sociology, geography, economics, science, and the arts.
A community group with a focus on health and wellbeing explored different ideas and eventually decided on a project about air quality to help improve health in the area. From the early stages of their work together, this was an issue that their members and people in the area wanted to address.
Their research project question became “How can we address/ improve local air quality?”. The researcher they worked with helped them to run a project on exploring behaviour change - encouraging car sharing and reducing local emissions, especially in busy communal spaces. The researcher also helped them to measure and communicate air quality levels and how to identify small, achievable local actions to improve it.
A charity that supports the local East African community in Barking and Dagenham through educational and cultural activities wanted to better understand why members of their community were not participating in the COVID-19 vaccination programme.
They set out to answer the question “Why is there COVID-19 vaccine scepticism within the East African Community in Barking and Dagenham and how can we combat it?”. The charity worked with a public health researcher to develop both quantitative and qualitative methods to get a clearer understanding of the situation. With the support of their researcher, they ran two focus groups and 30-minute, one-on-one interviews, as well as designed a questionnaire to reach the wider community. Their results guided various interventions within the community.
A community group that works to improve access to, and the quality of, local parks and green spaces as well as the biodiversity and wildlife in those parks, had climate action as their main focus. They wanted to do something they hadn’t done before to raise awareness of climate change and meet a need in the community.
After exploring various ideas, the group decided they wanted to look at how to support local households to reduce their carbon footprint, starting with energy use. Their research question became “How can we support local households to reduce their carbon footprint?”. In the long term, they were interested in offering access to solar panels and ground-source heat pumps to replace traditional boilers.
A community garden project which is linked to a local hospital had an existing scheme of providing affordable veg boxes with the fresh produce they grow to people (and their families) experiencing or recovering from long-term illness. The group wanted to expand their veg box scheme to reach a wider audience, especially those on lower incomes.
Their research question became “How can a local veg box scheme help promote healthy eating and sustainability?”.
The group worked closely with a researcher to explore approaches to healthy eating and behaviour change linked to diet and wellbeing. Together, they looked into how to promote sustainability and the circular food economy, such as less food waste, eating local affordable organic food and promoting the right to good fresh food.
A charity based in the rural town of Nairn was committed to bringing people together to improve local green spaces. They wanted to know “How can we know more about the environmental impact we’re making locally?”.
The charity worked with a researcher to develop community research skills and to create case studies and stories that capture the experiences of the people they work with to create a Net Zero Nairn. Their researcher trained community volunteers in research skills and guided them through the process of becoming peer researchers - designing and carrying out a qualitative interview study of the volunteer experience. The results were shared at a showcase event and in a report to the charity’s Trustees.
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Here are two examples of the University of Reading’s work to provide inspiration to community groups as part of our collaboration on the Community Led Research Pilot.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, health inequalities became increasingly magnified among some Black, Asian and minority ethnic groups. As a result, Health Education England implemented a programme to support Community Participatory Action Research (CPAR) in which researchers and community stakeholders worked together as equal partners. This research was a partnership between Reading Borough Council (RBC), Reading Voluntary Action (RVA), the Alliance for Cohesion and Racial Equality (ACRE), the Reading Community Learning Centre (RCLC) and the University of Reading's Participation Lab.
The collaboration led to the research question “What are the inequalities facing minority ethnic communities in accessing healthcare in Reading?”. The project produced a final report outlining the key findings from the work led by five community researchers and their recommendations for tackling inequalities. This covered topics on men's mental health, maternal services, accessing healthcare services for minority ethnic women, and the impact of COVID-19 on the Nepalese community.
The river Loddon is hidden under a Basingstoke shopping centre for much of its first mile. It meanders for 28 miles before joining the Thames in the Berkshire village of Wargrave. This river and the 400 square miles it drains – the Loddon catchment – was home to a unique University of Reading experiment which combined research and teaching to figure out how societies can live more sustainably.
The Loddon Observatory linked researchers from disciplines as disparate as typography and geography with farmers, businesses and government agencies to work together on solutions to problems within the Loddon catchment by tackling the research question “How can the communities and businesses within the river Loddon catchment utilize the river more sustainably?”
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