Participation processes at work in an evaluative project

Setting up a regulative intervention-research based on an evaluative research-intervention

Abstract

This article reveals an unforeseen research arising from a thesis currently being carried out at the Haute Garonne Departmental Fire and Rescue Service. The participatory research is qualified as Evaluative Research-Intervention (now R-Ie) since it aims to evaluate the training system of firefighters (now SP). Its working group (now WG) set up is encountering a decline in the participation of the SP, leading it to formulate a request for regulation. The commissioning of this new intervention-research, known as regulation or R-Ir, takes the form of an evaluation and attempts to bring to light the process of stakeholder participation in a participatory research process. Based on the sociology of translation, we interviewed 12 people through interviews and the WG through six forms. While the results highlight the knots of tension between the sphere of research and that of intervention, which have weakened the sealed alliances, they reveal the perpetual dialogic of the researcher-worker, tightrope walker, on a thread between commitment and distance. Ambivalences in speeches emerge, adjustments and reshaping of the WG take shape and shifts of the SP appear, giving a glimpse of the dynamic landscape of R-Ie. The reflection continues around the TESS, a third-space-socio-scientific space and a link between the spheres of research and intervention. The discussion opens the debate on a possible dynamic modeling of R-I, on the question of regulations in this type of participatory research and that of squared evaluations (the research-intervention evaluating being evaluated).