A decade of community action research

The aim of this paper is to reflect on the past decade of research and community action on alcohol and especially on some of the presentations given in the three previous international meetings on community action: in Ontario 1989, San Diego 1992, and Greve Florence 1995. The projects reported on are diverse, reflecting the different cultures represented, but there are also common strands. Among these common strands is the growing consensus that at the heart of successful evaluated community action projects is a process of reciprocal and respectful communication: between different community sectors and also between the community and researchers. While there is increased acknowledgment of the knowledge community sectors bring to planning and implementing community action, there is also an increasing focus on the role of the researcher in providing research-based knowledge to facilitate the development of effective community strategies to reduce alcohol-use-related harm. This is in contrast to a research role which emphasizes only outcome evaluation. Another development apparent through the years covered in the international meeting is the use of more naturalistic approaches to evaluation in acknowledgment that experimental design may not be feasible or scientifically appropriate for the evaluation of community action projects.