摘要：Participatory research relies on stakeholder inputs to obtain its acclaimed benefits of improvedsocial relevance, validity, and actionability of research outcomes. We focus here on participatory researchin the context of natural resource management. Participants' acceptance of participatory research processesis key to their implementation. Our first assumption is that this positive view and acceptance of participationin research processes is a public good for the whole participatory research community. We also assumethat the diversity of participatory forms of research is rarely considered by potential participants when theymake their decisions about whether or not to participate in a proposed process. We specifically addresshow to avoid stakeholders' reluctance to be involved in participatory research projects based on disillusionwith past experiences. We argue that the disappointment experienced by stakeholders and other participants(i.e., researchers and policy makers) can be avoided by being upfront and precise about how "participation"will be implemented, and what kind of involvement is expected from participants. Such a collective effortfrom the research community can also clarify the variety of possible implementations for potentialparticipants. Building on earlier efforts to characterize and categorize the diversity of participatory researchapproaches, we develop a conceptual analytic procedural framework to make participants' roles explicitin the implementation of different participatory research processes. This framework consists of three facets:(1) the flows of information among participants and the control over these flows for each step in a process,i.e., who will be expected to produce information, who will use this information, and who will receive theresults; (2) the timing of the involvement of participants in the different steps of the research process, andthe framing power that is associated with each process step; and (3) the organization of communicationamong participants for each information flow, i.e., in what configuration (bilaterally or as a group, mediatedor face to face) the interactions among researchers, stakeholders, and policy makers will take place. Thisframework can accommodate a wide variety of research methods, and highlights exactly how participantsare involved in research processes. We are prescriptive in dealing with the need to be procedurally explicitwhen engaging in participatory research. We anticipate that using this framework will lead to morethoughtful acceptances or refusals to participate in proposed research processes. Our framework is basedon various experiences with participatory research. It is intended to be used from the very beginning of aparticipatory research process as a conceptual guide for researchers. We suggest a protocol to transform itinto more practical guidelines for communicating about upcoming participatory research processes. Theleader of such processes should propose at each key stage an explicit, yet adaptive, plan for the followingstages. This plan should also specify in what ways participants will be involved, and how the plan itselfcan be questioned and revised.
关键词：framing; information flow; participatory research; water management
