Community-Based Research Methodology for Emergent Practice-Based Questions v1

This protocol describes a framework for community-based research projects that cannot be adequately addressed through singular methodological approaches, do not have a single outcome or result, are designed for questions embedded in continually changing real-world contexts, particularly those involving individual or small group activity, cultural and/or socially constructed practices, and applied contexts where both the problem and appropriate value criteria emerge through investigation. It is designed to enrol a global research and research-practitioner community into the wider process of setting the research agenda, establishing the context, designing the methodology and methods, conducting the experiments and/or gathering the data, processing and analysing that data, interpreting it and finding uses for the new knowledge that emerges. The expected results would, therefore, take the form of a program of further research projects which engage with the research problem from multiple perspectives, using multiple approaches and in a variety of contexts.