The spillover effects from participatory research: Research assistants as an impact pathway for disaster risk reduction?

Participatory research has been shown to affect change in participants, but limited attention has been paid to impact pathways beyond traditional research subjects. This critical gap in the literature is addressed by analysing the impacts of a community engagement for disaster risk reduction case study on its research assistants. The findings demonstrate that undertaking participatory research affects research assistants, changing their risk reduction intentions, perceptions, and behaviours. Research assistants report that these effects 'spillover' to affect their social networks and wider communities. Finally, these effects are seen to 'spill back over' to benefit the research project and wider research culture. Framing these findings through research on social capital, social learning, and 'spillover' effects, this case study traces an ideal participatory impact pathway through research assistants, wherein participation: fosters cognitive learning, influences normative positions, translates into altered relations, supports altered behaviours, and 'spills over' to affect non-participants. By identifying how participatory disaster risk reduction research may be generating more diverse effects than previously assumed, including how involvement in participatory research may be an effective impact pathway in itself, this research offers new empirical and theoretical insights into how public participation works and how it might contribute to transformational change. By presenting a methodological template that can be developed and reapplied in both disaster risk reduction and wider contexts, this case study ultimately encourages and justifies wider interdisciplinary uptake and investment in 'costly-yet-impactful' participatory methods.