Who are the stakeholders in community research? In this step, we consider stakeholder mapping and why it is important.

A stakeholder is anyone who has an interest in or will be affected by your research. Different stakeholders will have different points of view. Stakeholder mapping means identifying the main stakeholders and visualising their relationships to your project.

When you design your project, you can choose to involve participants who represent different stakeholder perspectives. The project will have a greater chance of success if you have thought about the different needs of the stakeholders.

Some stakeholders might have a great interest in the outcomes of your research, especially if they are affected by it, so it is important that they feel involved. Others might have the power to influence the outcomes and the success of your research, so it is important to attend to their requirements as well.

An analysis of stakeholders’ interest in your project and their influence on its outcomes could help you develop strategies to engage a range of stakeholders.

In this exercise you will consider, for a specific example, who the stakeholders are, and who are most interested, and who are most influential.

Exercise

Imagine that your local area suffers greatly from traffic problems - there are too many vehicles on the road. This makes it difficult for people to get to work on time. In addition, some vehicles make it dangerous to cross the road. The plan is to conduct research with members of the community to devise ways of reducing traffic congestion. Consider the list of potential stakeholders:

• Parents in the local community

• The official local government leader

• Community leaders

• Commuters (people who regularly journey to work by walking, or using their own vehicle, or by public transport)

• Bus or taxi drivers

Rate each of the stakeholders in terms of their potential interests in your research and the influence they might have on its success by clicking on this link. Please note that this link will take you to an external tool. 

Now click here to reveal the results

Comparing your own ratings with the matrix, were you in line with the majority ratings, or did you rate the influence and interests differently from others?

To improve accessibility here is a link to the results of this exercise as a Google Sheet.

Over to you

In the forum below, discuss what do you think are the implications of this mapping for the way you should engage the stakeholders?

Can you see how this kind of analysis could help you develop strategies to engage the different stakeholders, and come up with a good solution? Discuss your thoughts here with other participants, so that we have a basis for thinking about how to influence actions in the next step.

Like and reply to other posts and see if you can expand on the points they raise.