Background: Community-based participatory research (CBPR) approaches that actively engage communities in a study are assumed to lead to relevant findings, trusting relationships, and greater satisfaction with the research process.
Objective: To examine community members' perceptions of trust, benefit, satisfaction, and burden associated with their participation.
Design, setting, and participants: A randomized controlled trial tested a cancer prevention intervention in members of African-American churches. Data were collected at baseline and 1-year follow-up.
Measurements: Subscales measured perception of trust in the research project and the project team, benefit from involvement with the project, satisfaction with the project and the team, and perception of burden associated with participation.
Main results: Overall, we found high levels of trust, perceived benefit, and satisfaction, and low perceived burden among community members in Partnership to Reach African Americans to Increase Smart Eating. In bivariate analyses, participants in the intervention group reported more perceived benefit and trust (P <.05). Participants in smaller churches reported more benefit, satisfaction and trust, while participants from churches without recent health activities perceived greater benefit, greater satisfaction, and lower burden with the project and the team (P <.05). Participants whose pastors had less educational attainment noted higher benefit and satisfaction; those whose pastors were making personal lifestyle changes noted higher benefit and satisfaction, but also reported higher burden (P <.05).
Conclusions: A randomized clinical trial designed with a CBPR approach was associated with high levels of trust and a perceived benefit of satisfaction with the research process. Understanding variations in responses to a research partnership will be helpful in guiding the design and implementation of future CBPR efforts.