Participatory Action Research Challenges Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Review and Comparison across Two European Projects

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Under digital transition, certain software/applications have been mentioned. However, they have been mentioned in the passing. It needs to be explained which activities of the PAR workshop were taken over by those applications so that readers of this article get tips on which challenges can be overcome by these applications. 

Author Response

Esteemed Reviewer,
We thank you for the positive feedback and for the suggestions provided. Based on the detailed and constructive feedback provided, the paper has been significantly improved.

The team had debated including a more detailed explanation of which applications could be used and for what, however, we decided that was not within the scope of the paper, which was already growing very long. However, we recognize the importance of this topic. As such, and in order to address the recommendation of the reviewer, brief descriptions of the recommended usage of the most commonly mentioned apps have been included and/or extended in the Digital Transition chapter:

“The INCCA workshops required the possibility of creating breakout rooms for certain exercises, so Microsoft Teams and Zoom were the best alternatives, as they included this feature. The breakout room function of these applications allows the session moderators to divide the participants into groups, sending each to a separate call where team activities can take place.”

“Other authors opted to use social messaging applications instead of videoconferencing tools, such as WhatsApp , due to their widespread popularity and ease of access [34,35]. These applications can be more practical for informal communication than videoconferencing apps, and they also allow the users to share documents such as surveys and task lists, to name a few.”

The uMap application has been described previously in the sections detailing the approach of the projects, so we avoided repeating the same text in this section. However, more detailed descriptions of Mentimeter and Miro were added:

“Miro acts as an interactive, collaborative platform where several users can add information simultaneously and in different formats (e.g. text, tables, images, etc) and see what others are doing in real time, making it a great tool for participatory brainstorming processes.”

“The participants could explore the tool individually, and then answer a set of questions about the results using the Mentimeter application. This app allows users to fill simple questionnaires created by the session organizers, and to see the results in a graphical manner in real time as other participants submit their answers.”

With best regards,
The Authors

Reviewer 2 Report

My problems in reading this study are the method section and the structure of the paper.

It is not clear how the method can be redone. Figure 1 shows a selection process. But who did the selection? Were the papers divided? Or were there more researchers for one paper? How is the validity monitored?

How is the relation with the two projects?

What is the goal of the paper? I read three (4?)rather different things:

 

19: identify common themes

29: offering guidance to practitioners

70: describes the perceptions

916: This paper has presented an enumeration of the most significant challenges

 

31: doubling?

96: numbering not correct. 3.1 must be 2.1 etc.

 

130: Case 1????? How to read this? Are there case studies? And if so, why are they not mentioned before in the method section?

 

296: “After careful analysis of the literature, we have identified commonly recurring themes of challenges and difficulties encountered in the selected studies, and have categorized them in four different groups – Methodological, Project, Participatory, and Personal Stability – “

 

This is more for a method section. And an explanation is needed for each of the four.

 

310: Help the reader by mentioning the 3 challenges before discussing them. (also by the other challenges)

 

I think the reference list is not in the correct format.

Author Response

Esteemed Reviewer,
We thank you for the detailed corrections and suggestions provided. We have revised the paper accordingly. Based on the detailed and constructive feedback provided, the paper has been significantly improved. Our detailed response to the reviewer’s comments is provided below:

• English Revision Recommended:

As suggested by the reviewer, the paper was revised by an English-speaking academic, and thus, extensive improvements were made in regard to writing quality and consistency throughout the document.

• My problems in reading this study are the method section and the structure of the paper. It is not clear how the method can be redone. Figure 1 shows a selection process. But who did the selection? Were the papers divided? Or were there more researchers for one paper? How is the validity monitored?

The papers resulting from the literature search were randomly divided between the first two authors during the selection process. Afterwards, each author analyzed 25% of the papers assigned to the other author to validate the results. This was done in order to maintain the level of quality in the selection process and to avoid bias.

In order to clarify the methodology for the reader, we have added the following excerpt to the methods section:
“The first and second authors of this paper performed the selection of suitable literature in order to minimize bias. The articles were randomly distributed among the two authors for analysis, then each author performed a cross-check on 25% of the other author’s papers.”

• How is the relation with the two projects?

The two projects included in the paper are related to the study as they are also heavily reliant on PAR methodologies. We do not discuss the results of these projects in this study, but rather offer our own perceptions and experiences of the challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic caused to us in this field of research. In doing so, we compare these perceptions with those of authors from the literature analyzed, which we believe adds more in-depth details about these challenges and how to avoid them. It is also a way to include a large amount of experience and information on the topic that would not be available otherwise, as these viewpoints (from these two projects) have not been previously published.

• What is the goal of the paper? I read three (4?)rather different things:

19: identify common themes

29: offering guidance to practitioners

70: describes the perceptions

916: This paper has presented an enumeration of the most significant challenges

The goals of this study are mainly the following: 1) To identify and explore the common challenges (themes) of PAR during the COVID-19 pandemic; 2) to compare the experiences from literature with our own in the two projects that were included. Additionally, we opted to add a third, minor goal, where we present the most relevant lessons learned from these experiences, mainly in the concluding sections.

We have since removed the mention of “guidance” or “guidelines” as an objective of this study in order to avoid confusing the reader, since this is only present in the last sections of the manuscript and not one of the main goals.

• 31: doubling?

The final sentences of the abstract have been restructured and this issue has been corrected.

• 96: numbering not correct. 3.1 must be 2.1 etc.

The numbering has been fixed. Thank you for identifying this error.

• 130: Case 1????? How to read this? Are there case studies? And if so, why are they not mentioned before in the method section?

This work does not feature case studies. The “Cases” here refer to the two different projects. Upon reading this feedback, and in order to avoid confusing the reader, we have opted to remove this terminology from the titles. Chapters 3 and 4 have, thus, been renamed to be simply “INCCA Project” and “UNaLab Project” without “Case #”.

• 296: “After careful analysis of the literature, we have identified commonly recurring themes of challenges and difficulties encountered in the selected studies, and have categorized them in four different groups – Methodological, Project, Participatory, and Personal Stability – “

This is more for a method section.

By the recommendation of the reviewer, this segment of text has been moved to the methodology section, where it is more fitting. In its place, a short description of the section’s contents has been provided.

• And an explanation is needed for each of the four.

An explanation of the rationale behind each of the categories is given in their respective sections. For example, section 5.1. explains what we consider to be Methodological challenges, section 5.2 explains Project challenges, and so on. We structured the paper in this manner to guarantee a good flow of reading, as well as to avoid having to explain the categories multiple times.

• 310: Help the reader by mentioning the 3 challenges before discussing them. (also by the other challenges)

In order to enhance the reading experience for the reader, and to make the experience more organized, a brief description of the multiple challenges that are explored within each category has been added to the respective sections’ introductory texts (5.1, 5.2 and 5.3).

• I think the reference list is not in the correct format.

The reference list was generated using the reference manager software application “Mendeley” using the plugin for MDPI’s specified format “Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute”. Upon comparing the resulting reference list with the examples provided by the submission template, we have not identified major format issues. However, we have amended one citation that was inserted using the wrong format.

 

With best regards,

The Authors

Reviewer 3 Report

This study topic is fascinating. As a PAR researcher, I could relate the findings to my own experiences. I found this work well written and gradually established based on evidence. At some point, it was too elaborate, however, the texts were relevant. I would request authors do an additional compressing to increase readability. 

Author Response

Esteemed Reviewer,

We thank you kindly for the encouraging, positive feedback, as well as your recommendation. The length of the document has been a concern of ours as well, and we have had to reduce the content several times before reaching this point.

On this new revision, we have tried to compress the text as much as possible once again, however, due to the sheer density of information contained in this manuscript, the reduction in size was limited. Furthermore, other reviewers recommended we added more details to several sections, which resulted in new text being added. This minimized the visible effects of the prior efforts to reduce the paper’s length. We tried to improve writing in several sections as an indirect way to achieve readability in other ways, given that reducing the paper’s length proved difficult.

We hope that our efforts were enough to generate a good reading experience despite the length of the study.

 

With best regards,

The Authors

Reviewer 4 Report

This article is well-written and well-constructed, and very beneficial in PAR research. I only have one comment on the initial search of the literature review process: The author used seven keywords/key terms in Scopus and only three in JPRM. Are there any differences in the results if the researcher uses a similar keyword combination in Scopus and JPRM? The author could explain more on how they choose such keyword combinations for getting the specific articles. Are there any particular reasons or specific methods (expert judgment?) to determine the keywords? 

 

 

 

Author Response

Esteemed Reviewer,

We thank you for the detailed corrections and suggestions provided. We have revised the paper accordingly. Based on the detailed and constructive feedback provided, the paper has been significantly improved. Our detailed response to the reviewer’s comments is provided below:

The decision to use less keywords on JPRM’s website was primarily due to the search engine’s limitations. JPRM website’s search function is quite rudimentary when compared to the Scopus one; notably in the fact that it does not allow for complex parameter creation using the logical function “OR”. For this reason, the search parameters on JPRM have to be simplified, so we opted to focus on the COVID related keywords. It should also be noted that JPRM is a journal that deals exclusively with participatory and action research topics, so conducting additional searches using PAR related keywords would be redundant.

To answer the question, and considering that complex parameter searches are not supported by JPRM’s search function, it would not be feasible to conduct that search with all the parameters. Since these parameters were defined to be employed with the “OR” function (e.g. “COVID-19” OR “Pandemic”), a rudimentary (additive) search function would always try to find entries containing all of them, and not one of two. Doing so would return 0 articles.

Regarding the keyword choice, it was decided by three of the authors in order to find all the relevant articles while minimizing false-positives in results. The goal was to find articles relating to PAR (A), COVID (B), and Challenges (C). In order to make sure we didn’t miss out on relevant literature, we expanded each of the parameters to include analogous terms (e.g. COVID or Coronavirus), and then searched by articles with any combination of A+B+C. It should be noted that while groups A and B contain very focused terms, group C had to include broader definitions as a result of the multiple ways an author can describe encountering challenges. Thus group C accounts for the large variability in the initial results and which led to 84% of them being excluded during the selection process. 

To improve clarity on this aspect, we added a few more sentences to this section in order to explain the design rationale behind the keyword selection, as well as the reason for the reduced keyword usage on JPRM.

With best regards,

The Authors