Qualitative methods in transport research: the 'action research' approach

This paper explores the potential of ‘action research’ as transport survey method, with particular emphasis on critically assessing its utility in the resolution of major transport policy challenges, such as the mitigation of climate change and environmental impacts, transport-related social exclusion and intergenerational equity issues. Although not particularly novel within the social sciences, it is an approach that has been largely overlooked within the field of transport studies to date. Action research has a long history within the social sciences, dating back to practical problems in wartime situations in Europe and the United States (Reason and McArdle, 2004). It has only recently emerged within the literature as a transport survey method (e.g. Priya Uteng, 2009; Porter et al., 2010). The method is specifically designed to support and actively engineer behaviour change as an integral part of the research process (Robson, 2002). It is inherently collaborative, involving repeated knowledge interactions and exchanges between the researcher and the ‘researched’. It can be applied at either the level of individuals, small groups and/or ‘communities’ and organisations, with the expressed aim of bringing together research inquiry and future policy or planned actions (ibid). The paper presents some practical examples of where action research has been used to illicit information about people’s travel experiences and behaviours and asks whether, and in what way, these have achieved different outcomes from other qualitative transport survey methods. It seeks to identify the most appropriate contexts for action research and to explore the skills and techniques which researchers need to develop if they are to overcome some of the main criticisms of the method. It then evaluates some of the critical challenges of applying an action research approach and identifies potential ways for overcoming these. Finally, it discusses the key challenges which action researchers are likely to encounter in the analysis, presentation and dissemination of their action research ‘data’ and identifies some potential ways of overcoming these.