Tell it to Me Straight: The Benefits (and Struggles) of a Consumer- driven Assessment Process Joy S. Kaufman, 1 Michelle Abraczinskas, 2 and Ida S. Salusky 3 Highlights • Training approach for community-based participatory research (CBPR) is provided. • Data collected by consumer-research team were seen as more authentic and resulted in greater use. • Lessons learned about overcoming common barriers in a CBPR approach are presented. © 2019 Society for Community Research and Action Abstract Community-based Participatory Research (CBPR), where consumers participate in the design and execution of an evaluation, holds promise for increasing the validity and usefulness of evaluations of services. However, there is no literature comparing methods and outcomes of studies conducted by professional evaluators with those conducted through a consumer-driven evaluation process. We attempt to fill this gap by presenting the methods and results from a qualitative evaluation conducted by professional evaluators along with one conducted by a team of consumer researchers who engaged in a CBPR process. This paper includes: (a) methods, and findings that emerged from these evaluations each tasked with examining similar issues within the same community; (b) description of the process used to train the team of consumer researchers whose economic and educational backgrounds are different than most evaluators; and (c) lessons learned about how to prepare for and work with common barriers to implementing a CBPR evaluation. Keywords Community-based participatory research  Consumer researchers Literature Review Community-based participatory research (CBPR) embod- ies heterogeneous approaches to the democratization of scientific inquiry (Cargo & Mercer, 2008). While no uni- versal boundaries exist around what constitutes CBPR, generally accepted principles include: (a) the inclusion of stakeholders/community members in the entire research process (i.e., conceptualization and implementation, analy- sis, and dissemination of findings); (b) power-sharing rela- tionships between researchers and stakeholders; (c) privileging local knowledge and the emic perspective; and (d) engagement in a transformative process. Through this process, historically marginalized stakeholders are empow- ered to take on leadership positions. Researchers become more aware of their strengths and limitations in advancing complex research agendas involving economic, environ- mental, health, and social disparities (Israel et al., 2005; Minkler, 2004; Shultz, Krieger, & Galea, 2003). In addi- tion to use in research, for more than 20 years participa- tory approaches have also been utilized in program evaluation (e.g., community-based participatory evaluation (CBPE); Abuel, 1999). The participatory and power-sharing nature of CBPR is critical to conducting trustworthy and credible evaluation and research that reflects the lived experiences of partici- pants (Tremblay, Martin, Macaulay, & Pluye, 2017). Power-sharing in CBPR can begin to repair relationships damaged by the scientific community’s history of exploit- ing the poor, vulnerable, and oppressed. Repairing these relationships is necessary if the aim of the work is to truly understand and meet the needs of communities. Repara- tions occur through the decolonization of knowledge and power shifting that takes place when community ✉ Joy S. Kaufman joy.kaufman@yale.edu 1 Division of Prevention and Community Research, Yale Univer- sity School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA 2 Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA 3 Department of Psychology, DePaul University, Chicago, IL, USA Am J Community Psychol (2019) 0:1–11 DOI 10.1002/ajcp.12373 ORIGINAL ARTICLE