Accessing community development research methodologies

This paper is a perspective on the strengths and weaknesses of community development research offered to health promoters by a community development insider. The author provides her rationale for the opinion that no research paradigm other than the qualitative one satisfies the naturalistic context of either community development or health promotion, including inquiry into concepts such as community health, community wellbeing, community competence and community self-reliance. Attention is drawn to key aspects of the community development process with relevance to health promoters which are largely undertheorized, including clarity about the central issue of the nature of the interaction among learning, action and change. Finally, the paper specifies three implications of the naturalistic paradigm for either research or practice. These include academic prejudice against qualitative research from some quarters, the limitations of all research paradigms for some questions, and essential uncertainties of naturalistic inquiry.