Scientific rigor and community participation in health promotion research: are they compatible?

An important challenge for those conducting health promotionresearch is to reconcile the competing demands of scientificrigor and community participation. To develop further the theoreticaland empirical basis for health promotion, research needs tobe scientifically rigorous in every aspect of conceptualization,design, implementation, analysis and interpretation. Anotherwidely held perspective in health promotion research is thatit should be based on widespread community participation invarious stages of the process. These two compelling forces arecompeting to the extent that they create questions about controlof the research questions, methods used and relevance. The natureof this dilemma is discussed in this paper, along with an exampleof how one community-based research unit is dealing with theseissues