MPH 509 Week 5 Participatory Research Design Example

Course	MPH 509 Community-Based Participatory Research
Week	5
Paper type	Participatory research design
Length	About 1,090 words, 5 pages
Format	APA 7 student paper
School	Chamberlain University
Program	Master of Public Health (MPH)
Updated	October 2026

Free sample paper for MPH 509 Week 5

Participatory Research Design: The Cedar Grove Drinking Water Study, With Every Methodological Decision Attributed to the Partner Who Made It

Student Name

Chamberlain University

MPH 509: Community-Based Participatory Research

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

What this page is doingThe title promises attribution of each decision, which is where shared authority in a design becomes visible.

Participatory Research Design: The Cedar Grove Drinking Water Study, With Every Methodological Decision Attributed to the Partner Who Made It

How the Question Arose

The research question was not the one the health department would have chosen. When the three partners first sat down together, the department's environmental health specialist proposed studying gastrointestinal illness linked to the park's water. Residents said illness was not their main concern. Their concerns were the money spent on bottled water, the days without water after repairs, discolored water and whether the owner would ever fix the system. After three meetings, the committee agreed on two questions: What do water problems at Cedar Grove cost households in money, time and health? And which changes would persuade residents to trust what comes out of their taps? The association's board chose the second question; the first combined residents' cost concern with the department's interest in health.

What this page is doingRecording how the question changed, and who changed it, shows the community holding power at the stage that most defines participatory research.

Design Overview

The study uses mixed methods over 12 months: a household survey offered to all 212 lots, monthly water sampling at 30 homes, outage and cost diaries kept by 40 households and three community forums to interpret results. Water sampling is included because small systems of the kind that serve manufactured home parks are more prone to health-related violations than larger ones (Pierce & Gonzalez, 2017), and residents wanted independent results. Each element below records who decided it.

Decisions Attributed

Table 1

Methodological Decisions and Who Made Them

Decision	Options considered	Decision made	Who decided
Research questions	Illness study; cost and trust study	Cost, time, health and acceptable solutions	Association board, agreed by committee
Survey content	Standard illness survey; resident-designed items	Mix: two standard illness items plus resident-written cost and trust items	Committee, drafted by community research associates
Sampling of households	Random sample; census of all lots	Census, with door-to-door visits by residents	Association
Water tests	Coliform only; broader panel	Coliform, chlorine residual, lead and copper, turbidity	University, after explaining options; association added discolored-water samples
Taps sampled	Random homes; homes at ends of lines	30 homes chosen by residents' outage log, half at line ends	Association, using its log
Outcome definitions	Clinical illness only; resident-defined costs	Both, with cost counted in dollars and hours	Committee
Interpretation	Researchers alone; forums	Three forums before any report	Committee

Note. Note. Composite partnership constructed for this course.

What Rigor Is Kept

Sharing decisions does not mean abandoning rigor. Water samples will be collected by trained community research associates following the state laboratory's chain-of-custody procedures and analyzed by a certified laboratory, which was the one decision the university held alone. The survey's two illness items are taken from established instruments so that results can be compared with other studies. The census approach removes sampling error for the survey, and the response rate will be reported. Wallerstein and Duran (2010) argue that participatory approaches can strengthen rather than weaken research quality by improving fit and participation, and the design tries to show that.

Measures Built With Partners

The cost and trust measures were written by the two community research associates with the committee. Cost items ask about bottled water purchases, trips to fill containers at a relative's home, missed work during outages and replacement of water heaters and fixtures damaged by sediment. Trust items ask whether residents drink tap water, give it to children or use it for cooking and what would change that. Draft items were tried out first with eight residents, four of them in Spanish, and three items were rewritten after testing, most memorably because the word "contaminated" was read as an accusation against neighbors.

Who Interprets Results

Results will be interpreted first at three community forums, held in the congregation's meeting space with Spanish interpretation and childcare. At each forum, the community research associates will present preliminary findings and ask residents what they mean. The committee will then agree on interpretations before any report is written. Where residents and researchers disagree, both readings will appear in the report.

What this page is doingPlacing interpretation with residents before any report is drafted extends shared authority to the phase where conventional studies most often leave the community out.

Capacity to Participate

Participation requires resources. Two residents hold paid posts as community research associates, trained in survey interviewing, water sampling and data protection. Steering committee members receive stipends. The study pays for interpretation, childcare and meeting costs. Minkler et al. (2008) found that the capacity of community partners, including leadership, skills and resources, shaped what environmental justice partnerships could achieve; the design treats capacity building as part of the study rather than a side benefit.

Protecting Residents

Most residents rent their lots, often month to month, and the park's owner controls both land and water. The design protects them in three ways. No household-level data are shared with the health department or the owner. If a lease fight is under way, the association can hold back findings for as long as three months. And survey responses are stored separately from names and lot numbers, with only two university staff holding the key.

Limits of the Design

The design cannot establish whether the water caused illness, because the study is too small and illness is self-reported. It cannot measure water quality before the study began, except through residents' logs. And because residents chose which taps to sample, results describe the worst parts of the system rather than the average, which the report will state plainly.

Timeline and Phases

The study runs 18 months. In the first quarter, the partners hire and train community research associates, obtain ethics approval, finalize and test the survey, and begin water sampling, so that the first monthly samples are taken before the survey starts. Months 4 to 6: door-to-door survey of all 212 households. Months 4 to 15: monthly water sampling at 30 homes and diaries in 40 households. Months 16 to 18: three community forums, interpretation by the committee, the community report and meetings with the owner and regulators. The committee meets monthly throughout, and each phase begins only after the committee confirms the previous phase is complete.

How the Design Will Report Its Own Partnership

Because the literature rarely describes how decisions were shared, the study will keep a decision log recording each methodological choice, the options considered and who decided, as summarized in Table 1. The log will be published as an appendix to the academic article and summarized in the community report, so that other researchers can judge the depth of participation for themselves rather than accept the label.

What this page is doingCommitting to publish a decision log makes the design's claim of shared authority checkable by readers outside the partnership.

References

Minkler, M., Vásquez, V. B., Tajik, M., & Petersen, D. (2008). Promoting environmental justice through community-based participatory research: The role of community and partnership capacity. Health Education & Behavior, 35(1), 119-137. https://doi.org/10.1177/1090198106287692

Pierce, G., & Gonzalez, S. R. (2017). Public drinking water system coverage and its discontents: The prevalence and severity of water access problems in California's mobile home parks. Environmental Justice, 10(5), 168-173. https://doi.org/10.1089/env.2017.0006

Wallerstein, N., & Duran, B. (2010). Community-based participatory research contributions to intervention research: The intersection of science and practice to improve health equity. American Journal of Public Health, 100(S1), S40-S46. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2009.184036

What the MPH 509 Week 5 assignment asks for

In the fifth week you design your participatory study. Explain how the research question arose and who shaped it. For each methodological decision, including measures, sampling, outcomes and interpretation, record the options considered and who decided. Explain what rigor is kept and how, since shared decisions do not mean abandoning standards. Describe measures built with partners and how they were tested. Say who interprets results and how disagreements are handled. Address the capacity partners need to take part and how the study provides it. Protect participants from the risks particular to your setting. State the design's limits plainly, so readers know what it can and cannot show.

How the MPH 509 Week 5 example is put together

The design opens with the question's history: the county proposed an illness study, residents wanted cost, outages and trust, and the committee merged them. Water sampling is justified by small-system violation evidence. A table attributes seven decisions, such as residents choosing taps from their outage log and the university keeping laboratory methods. Rigor rests on certified testing, two standard illness items and a census survey. Cost and trust items were written by resident associates and three were rewritten after testing. Interpretation happens at three forums before any report. Paid associates, interpretation and childcare build capacity, protections follow from the owner's control of land and water, and a decision log will be published.

Reading the MPH 509 Week 5 grading rubric

The heaviest loss on a participatory design is a conventional design with a partnership paragraph attached: every decision made by the researcher and an advisory board mentioned once. It is the most common submission and is graded accordingly. A second weakness is rigor abandoned in the name of participation, with no standard methods or quality steps. Measures imposed without testing, interpretation reserved for researchers and no resources for community participation also cost points. Strong designs show how the question arose, attribute each decision, explain retained rigor, build and test measures with partners, place interpretation with the community, fund participation and state limits. Limits left unstated, such as a nonrandom choice of homes, also cost marks.

MPH 509 Week 5 help: mistakes that cost points

Designing a study whose decisions are shared is unfamiliar for most students, who are used to designing alone. If you share your partners and question, we can help you list the decisions your design involves, record who would make each one and explain how rigor is kept. We can also help you draft measures with partners and plan community forums for interpretation. Your study and its decisions remain your own. If your section expects a particular methods format, such as specific aims, send it, and the custom sample will present the design that way while keeping the attribution table. A limits section matters here too, and we can help it state plainly what residents' choices of homes or taps mean for how far results can be generalized.

Get a MPH-509 Week 5 example written to your instructions

Send the Week 5 instructions with the required elements your section publishes and your partnership context, and a custom example is written to those requirements and returned inside 24 to 48 hours. The first one is free. Which decisions you hand over stays yours to argue.

More MPH 509 papers and MPH samples

MPH 509 Week 5 questions, answered

Does participatory mean abandoning rigor?

No, and designs that treat it that way serve nobody. Sampling still has to support the claims, measures still have to capture what they purport to, analysis still has to be defensible. What changes is who decides which questions are worth that effort and what counts as a meaningful outcome. Say which standards you are holding to and why.

How much authority do partners actually get?

Whatever the agreement in week three established, and the design should be consistent with it. If partners hold question setting and publication approval, the design cannot quietly reserve interpretation for the researcher. Inconsistency between the agreement and the design is something instructors check directly, since it reveals what the writer actually believes about the arrangement.

What is capacity building doing in a design?

Making shared authority usable. Partners cannot meaningfully approve a sampling strategy or an analysis plan that nobody has explained, so decision rights without support are formal rather than real. Building that in, with time and cost attached, is what distinguishes a design that intends partnership from one that has written the word into a document.

Where can I find a free MPH 509 Week 5 sample paper?

This page holds the complete MPH 509 Week 5 participatory design for a drinking water study, with every decision attributed to a partner.

How did the research question change in the MPH 509 Week 5 sample?

The county proposed an illness study; residents wanted cost, outages and trust studied, and the committee combined both into two questions.