R Janzen
Biographic Data
| ID | 43753 |
|---|---|
| NAME | R Janzen |
| GIVEN NAMES | R |
| FAMILY NAME | Janzen |
| SIGNATURE | JANZEN R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Centre for Community Based Research |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0505-6057 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 82 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Community-Based Evaluation When Localizing Sustainable Development Goals
The purpose of this practice note is to demonstrate how a community-based approach to evaluation can be used to support the evaluations of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals in local community settings. The authors argue that using a community-based evaluation approach that is stakeholder-driven, participatory, and action-oriented is one mechanism to address this challenge. They illustrate the utility of such an evaluation approach…
Life beyond Refuge
Canada is internationally recognized as a leader in welcoming refugee newcomers. However, there is limited evidence about how well refugee newcomers fare after arriving in Canada, and the effectiveness of resettlement services and supports. A system theory of change was developed to guide assessments of complexity across the refugee-serving sector that seek to investigate refugees’ lived experiences and evaluate practice across multiple levels. T…
The Impact of Syrian Refugee Arrivals on Local Systems of Support in Canada
Learning from and with community-based and participatory action research
Participatory action research fits well with conflict resolution and peacebuilding; it is used by scholar-practitioners as part of field-based practice efforts that contribute to transforming conflict and add to scholarly knowledge. However, as Cynthia Chataway’s analysis of a participatory action research project undertaken with the Mohawk community of Kahnawake indicated, there are considerable constraints on mutual inquiry when it occurs in se…
Faith and Settlement Partnerships
This article explores partnerships between faith groups and government-funded immigrant settlement services. It does so by reporting on perspectives of community stakeholders through a survey across four communities in Ontario, Canada. Survey results demonstrate that the existence, benefits, and challenges of faith and settlement partnerships are recognized by settlement workers, faith leaders, and other stakeholders. Yet the results also indicat…
Canadian Christian Churches as Partners in Immigrant Settlement and Integration
This article discusses the role of Canadian Christian churches in immigrant settlement and integration and discusses implications for the settlement sector. A total of 34 denominations responded to an online survey. Findings show that many churches are intentionally involved in immigrant ministry, motivated by their Christian and social concern. Existing immigrant supports are wide ranging and holistic, include the unique contribution of immigran…
Christian Churches and Immigrant Support in Canada
Canada receives roughly 250,000 immigrants each year, and the government spends considerable resources on assisting them to settle and integrate into Canadian society through the agencies they support. Most of these new immigrants settle in Canada's largest cities, where churches meet specific needs that extend beyond the capacities of government agencies. In smaller centers, churches cover a wide range of services because few government supports…
Just Faith? A National Survey Connecting Faith and Justice within the Christian Reformed Church
Does the call to pursue justice live in the hearts and minds of contemporary Christians? If so, to what extent? In order to address these questions, our research team used a community-based research approach to investigate how Christians in a specific denomination (the Christian Reformed Church in North America) conceptualize the relationship between justice and faith, what priority justice holds in their lives, and the barriers and enablers they…
Assessing the Value of Inductive and Deductive Outcome Measures in Community-Based Programs
Evaluators of community-based programs frequently need to decide whether to adopt an inductive or deductive approach in developing quantitative outcome measures. This article explores this issue using a case example of a child anti-poverty program called City Kidz. Its recent evaluation combined an inductive and deductive approach to develop a survey. The article describes the City Kidz evaluation and its survey before assessing the value of the …
Integrating Immigrants into the Life of Canadian Urban Christian Congregations
In just one generation the cultural face of Canadian society has been transformed. The relative level of immigration has increased rapidly as has diversity among those immigrants. This article reports on the findings of a national survey that offers a baseline of how and to what extent local Canadian Christian congregations are responding to this cultural diversity. In particular, it explores how churches are integrating immigrants within the lif…
Using Evaluation to Shape and Direct Comprehensive Community Initiatives
The purpose of this article is to discuss how evaluation can be used to shape and direct Comprehensive Community Initiatives in an ongoing way. It does so by offering a case example of the Waterloo Region Immigrant Employment Network (WRIEN). The article begins by reviewing how participatory action research can encourage reflective practice. After the WRIEN case example is presented, we consider this example in light of collaborative evaluation l…
Putting God in the Logic Model
Relative to the contribution that faith-based organizations make to Canadian society, evaluations of them are rare. The challenge for evaluators is to develop evaluation processes that meet the scrutiny of social science yet respect the centrality of faith inherent within their interventions. The challenge is compounded when evaluating faith-based innovation. This article reviews the present status of evaluation in faith-based settings, highlight…
Evaluating community participation as prevention
Community‐based prevention programs strive to foster the composition of positive life stories, in part, by promoting active participation in community settings. This article used life narratives of youth to explore the experience of community participation and showed how such participation influenced their lives. Youth aged 18–19 years who participated in Better Beginning, Better Futures ( n =62), a community‐based prevention program, when they w…
Developing Theory From Complexity
Research studies are increasingly complex: They draw on multiple methods to gather data, generate both qualitative and quantitative data, and frequently represent the perspectives of more than one stakeholder. The teams that generate them are increasingly multidisciplinary. A commitment to engaging community members in the research process often adds a further layer of complexity. How to approach a synthesizing analysis of these multiple and vari…
Putting Values into Practice
The purpose of the paper is to reflect on value dilemmas in mental health consumer‐run organizations and to discuss implications for research, policy, and practice. We review the roots of consumer‐run organizations in the self‐help movement and the psychiatric survivor liberation movement, focusing on the distinctive values espoused by consumer‐run organizations. We also discuss evidence‐based and value‐based approaches to mental health policy fo…
Immigrant Parenting
This article presents a new orienting framework for understanding immigrant parenting. The framework was developed and tested through a qualitative research study that involved 50 focus group interviews with immigrant parents who have resided in Canada for less than 3 years. The article begins by reviewing the existing parenting models found in academic literature and noting the limitations of these models. Next it describes the components of our…
Inspiring Knowledge Mobilization Through a Communications Policy
Taking Culture Seriously in Community Mental Health is a community-based participatory action research project in Ontario devoted to developing, pilot testing, and evaluating mental health service models grounded in the concept of "cultural empowerment." To ensure that the knowledge generated in the project is shared and used, the research collaborative places a heavy emphasis on communicating with stakeholder groups. This paper provides an overv…
Capturing system level activities and impacts of mental health consumer‐run organizations
Since the 1970s mental health consumer‐run organizations have come to offer not only mutual support, but they have also adopted agendas for broader social change. Despite an awareness of the need for system level efforts that create supportive environments for their members, there has been limited research demonstrating how their system level activities can be documented or their impacts evaluated. The purpose of this paper is to feature a method…
A longitudinal study of mental health consumer/survivor initiatives
The objective of this study was to evaluate the impacts of participation in mental health Consumer/Survivor Initiatives (CSIs), organizations run by and for people with mental illness. A nonequivalent comparison group design was used to compare three groups of participants: (a) those who were continually active in CSIs over a 36‐month period (n = 25); (b) those who had been active in CSIs at 9‐ and 18‐month follow‐up periods, but who were no long…
A longitudinal study of mental health consumer/survivor initiatives
Mental health consumer-run organizations are alternatives to mainstream mental health services, and they have the dual focus of supporting members and creating systems change. The existing literature suggests that these organizations have beneficial impacts on social support, community integration, personal empowerment, subjective quality of life, symptom distress, utilization of hospitals, and employment/education. However, much of this research…
A Longitudinal study of mental health consumer/survivor initiatives
The purpose of this article is to report on the system-level findings of a longitudinal study of four mental health consumerñrun self-help organizations. Quantitative and qualitative data revealed that staff and members of the four Consumer/Survivor Initiatives (CSIs) participated actively in system-level activities, including community planning, public education, advocacy, and action research. The qualitative data revealed a number of perceived …
A longitudinal study of mental health consumer/survivor initiatives
This article examines the outcomes of participation in mental health Consumer/Survivor Initiatives (CSIs) and identifies helpful qualities of CSIs through a longitudinal, qualitative study that involved in-depth interviews of people who experienced severe mental health challenges in Ontario, Canada. We used a nonequivalent control group design in which we compared active participants in CSIs ( n = 15) with nonactive participants ( n = 12) at base…
A longitudinal study of mental health consumer/survivor initiatives
To evaluate the impacts of participation in mental health Consumer/Survivor Initiatives (CSIs), we used a nonequivalent control group design to compare new, active participants in CSIs ( n = 61) with nonactive participants ( n = 57) at baseline, 9-month, and 18-month follow-up intervals. The two groups were comparable at baseline on a wide range of demographic variables, self-reported psychiatric diagnosis, service use, and outcome measures. At 9…
A Comprehensive Evaluation Framework for Mental Health Consumer/Survivor Organizations
This article provides a framework for the evaluation of mental health consumer/ survivor organizations that consists of four main components: (a) participatory processes, (b) conceptualization of the activities and outcomes at the individual and systems levels of these organizations, (c) the combination of quantitative and qualitative methods for examining activities and outcomes, and (d) dissemination and action. We assert that these components …
Immigrant Parenting
This article presents a new orienting framework for understanding immigrant parenting. The framework was developed and tested through a qualitative research study that involved 50 focus group interviews with immigrant parents who have resided in Canada for less than 3 years. The article begins by reviewing the existing parenting models found in academic literature and noting the limitations of these models. Next it describes the components of our…
Capturing system level activities and impacts of mental health consumer‐run organizations
Since the 1970s mental health consumer‐run organizations have come to offer not only mutual support, but they have also adopted agendas for broader social change. Despite an awareness of the need for system level efforts that create supportive environments for their members, there has been limited research demonstrating how their system level activities can be documented or their impacts evaluated. The purpose of this paper is to feature a method…
A longitudinal study of mental health consumer/survivor initiatives
This article examines the outcomes of participation in mental health Consumer/Survivor Initiatives (CSIs) and identifies helpful qualities of CSIs through a longitudinal, qualitative study that involved in-depth interviews of people who experienced severe mental health challenges in Ontario, Canada. We used a nonequivalent control group design in which we compared active participants in CSIs ( n = 15) with nonactive participants ( n = 12) at base…
Integrating Immigrants into the Life of Canadian Urban Christian Congregations
In just one generation the cultural face of Canadian society has been transformed. The relative level of immigration has increased rapidly as has diversity among those immigrants. This article reports on the findings of a national survey that offers a baseline of how and to what extent local Canadian Christian congregations are responding to this cultural diversity. In particular, it explores how churches are integrating immigrants within the lif…
Canadian Christian Churches as Partners in Immigrant Settlement and Integration
This article discusses the role of Canadian Christian churches in immigrant settlement and integration and discusses implications for the settlement sector. A total of 34 denominations responded to an online survey. Findings show that many churches are intentionally involved in immigrant ministry, motivated by their Christian and social concern. Existing immigrant supports are wide ranging and holistic, include the unique contribution of immigran…
A longitudinal study of mental health consumer/survivor initiatives
To evaluate the impacts of participation in mental health Consumer/Survivor Initiatives (CSIs), we used a nonequivalent control group design to compare new, active participants in CSIs ( n = 61) with nonactive participants ( n = 57) at baseline, 9-month, and 18-month follow-up intervals. The two groups were comparable at baseline on a wide range of demographic variables, self-reported psychiatric diagnosis, service use, and outcome measures. At 9…
Learning from and with community-based and participatory action research
Participatory action research fits well with conflict resolution and peacebuilding; it is used by scholar-practitioners as part of field-based practice efforts that contribute to transforming conflict and add to scholarly knowledge. However, as Cynthia Chataway’s analysis of a participatory action research project undertaken with the Mohawk community of Kahnawake indicated, there are considerable constraints on mutual inquiry when it occurs in se…
Christian Churches and Immigrant Support in Canada
Canada receives roughly 250,000 immigrants each year, and the government spends considerable resources on assisting them to settle and integrate into Canadian society through the agencies they support. Most of these new immigrants settle in Canada's largest cities, where churches meet specific needs that extend beyond the capacities of government agencies. In smaller centers, churches cover a wide range of services because few government supports…
Evaluating community participation as prevention
Community‐based prevention programs strive to foster the composition of positive life stories, in part, by promoting active participation in community settings. This article used life narratives of youth to explore the experience of community participation and showed how such participation influenced their lives. Youth aged 18–19 years who participated in Better Beginning, Better Futures ( n =62), a community‐based prevention program, when they w…
A longitudinal study of mental health consumer/survivor initiatives
The objective of this study was to evaluate the impacts of participation in mental health Consumer/Survivor Initiatives (CSIs), organizations run by and for people with mental illness. A nonequivalent comparison group design was used to compare three groups of participants: (a) those who were continually active in CSIs over a 36‐month period (n = 25); (b) those who had been active in CSIs at 9‐ and 18‐month follow‐up periods, but who were no long…
A Longitudinal study of mental health consumer/survivor initiatives
The purpose of this article is to report on the system-level findings of a longitudinal study of four mental health consumerñrun self-help organizations. Quantitative and qualitative data revealed that staff and members of the four Consumer/Survivor Initiatives (CSIs) participated actively in system-level activities, including community planning, public education, advocacy, and action research. The qualitative data revealed a number of perceived …
Putting Values into Practice
The purpose of the paper is to reflect on value dilemmas in mental health consumer‐run organizations and to discuss implications for research, policy, and practice. We review the roots of consumer‐run organizations in the self‐help movement and the psychiatric survivor liberation movement, focusing on the distinctive values espoused by consumer‐run organizations. We also discuss evidence‐based and value‐based approaches to mental health policy fo…
Inspiring Knowledge Mobilization Through a Communications Policy
Taking Culture Seriously in Community Mental Health is a community-based participatory action research project in Ontario devoted to developing, pilot testing, and evaluating mental health service models grounded in the concept of "cultural empowerment." To ensure that the knowledge generated in the project is shared and used, the research collaborative places a heavy emphasis on communicating with stakeholder groups. This paper provides an overv…
Life beyond Refuge
Canada is internationally recognized as a leader in welcoming refugee newcomers. However, there is limited evidence about how well refugee newcomers fare after arriving in Canada, and the effectiveness of resettlement services and supports. A system theory of change was developed to guide assessments of complexity across the refugee-serving sector that seek to investigate refugees’ lived experiences and evaluate practice across multiple levels. T…
Faith and Settlement Partnerships
This article explores partnerships between faith groups and government-funded immigrant settlement services. It does so by reporting on perspectives of community stakeholders through a survey across four communities in Ontario, Canada. Survey results demonstrate that the existence, benefits, and challenges of faith and settlement partnerships are recognized by settlement workers, faith leaders, and other stakeholders. Yet the results also indicat…
A Comprehensive Evaluation Framework for Mental Health Consumer/Survivor Organizations
This article provides a framework for the evaluation of mental health consumer/ survivor organizations that consists of four main components: (a) participatory processes, (b) conceptualization of the activities and outcomes at the individual and systems levels of these organizations, (c) the combination of quantitative and qualitative methods for examining activities and outcomes, and (d) dissemination and action. We assert that these components …
A longitudinal study of mental health consumer/survivor initiatives
Mental health consumer-run organizations are alternatives to mainstream mental health services, and they have the dual focus of supporting members and creating systems change. The existing literature suggests that these organizations have beneficial impacts on social support, community integration, personal empowerment, subjective quality of life, symptom distress, utilization of hospitals, and employment/education. However, much of this research…
A Longitudinal study of mental health consumer/survivor initiatives
The purpose of this article is to report on the system-level findings of a longitudinal study of four mental health consumerñrun self-help organizations. Quantitative and qualitative data revealed that staff and members of the four Consumer/Survivor Initiatives (CSIs) participated actively in system-level activities, including community planning, public education, advocacy, and action research. The qualitative data revealed a number of perceived …
A longitudinal study of mental health consumer/survivor initiatives
This article examines the outcomes of participation in mental health Consumer/Survivor Initiatives (CSIs) and identifies helpful qualities of CSIs through a longitudinal, qualitative study that involved in-depth interviews of people who experienced severe mental health challenges in Ontario, Canada. We used a nonequivalent control group design in which we compared active participants in CSIs ( n = 15) with nonactive participants ( n = 12) at base…
A longitudinal study of mental health consumer/survivor initiatives
To evaluate the impacts of participation in mental health Consumer/Survivor Initiatives (CSIs), we used a nonequivalent control group design to compare new, active participants in CSIs ( n = 61) with nonactive participants ( n = 57) at baseline, 9-month, and 18-month follow-up intervals. The two groups were comparable at baseline on a wide range of demographic variables, self-reported psychiatric diagnosis, service use, and outcome measures. At 9…
Inspiring Knowledge Mobilization Through a Communications Policy
Taking Culture Seriously in Community Mental Health is a community-based participatory action research project in Ontario devoted to developing, pilot testing, and evaluating mental health service models grounded in the concept of "cultural empowerment." To ensure that the knowledge generated in the project is shared and used, the research collaborative places a heavy emphasis on communicating with stakeholder groups. This paper provides an overv…
Capturing system level activities and impacts of mental health consumer‐run organizations
Since the 1970s mental health consumer‐run organizations have come to offer not only mutual support, but they have also adopted agendas for broader social change. Despite an awareness of the need for system level efforts that create supportive environments for their members, there has been limited research demonstrating how their system level activities can be documented or their impacts evaluated. The purpose of this paper is to feature a method…
A longitudinal study of mental health consumer/survivor initiatives
The objective of this study was to evaluate the impacts of participation in mental health Consumer/Survivor Initiatives (CSIs), organizations run by and for people with mental illness. A nonequivalent comparison group design was used to compare three groups of participants: (a) those who were continually active in CSIs over a 36‐month period (n = 25); (b) those who had been active in CSIs at 9‐ and 18‐month follow‐up periods, but who were no long…
Developing Theory From Complexity
Research studies are increasingly complex: They draw on multiple methods to gather data, generate both qualitative and quantitative data, and frequently represent the perspectives of more than one stakeholder. The teams that generate them are increasingly multidisciplinary. A commitment to engaging community members in the research process often adds a further layer of complexity. How to approach a synthesizing analysis of these multiple and vari…
Putting Values into Practice
The purpose of the paper is to reflect on value dilemmas in mental health consumer‐run organizations and to discuss implications for research, policy, and practice. We review the roots of consumer‐run organizations in the self‐help movement and the psychiatric survivor liberation movement, focusing on the distinctive values espoused by consumer‐run organizations. We also discuss evidence‐based and value‐based approaches to mental health policy fo…
Immigrant Parenting
This article presents a new orienting framework for understanding immigrant parenting. The framework was developed and tested through a qualitative research study that involved 50 focus group interviews with immigrant parents who have resided in Canada for less than 3 years. The article begins by reviewing the existing parenting models found in academic literature and noting the limitations of these models. Next it describes the components of our…
Putting God in the Logic Model
Relative to the contribution that faith-based organizations make to Canadian society, evaluations of them are rare. The challenge for evaluators is to develop evaluation processes that meet the scrutiny of social science yet respect the centrality of faith inherent within their interventions. The challenge is compounded when evaluating faith-based innovation. This article reviews the present status of evaluation in faith-based settings, highlight…
Evaluating community participation as prevention
Community‐based prevention programs strive to foster the composition of positive life stories, in part, by promoting active participation in community settings. This article used life narratives of youth to explore the experience of community participation and showed how such participation influenced their lives. Youth aged 18–19 years who participated in Better Beginning, Better Futures ( n =62), a community‐based prevention program, when they w…
Using Evaluation to Shape and Direct Comprehensive Community Initiatives
The purpose of this article is to discuss how evaluation can be used to shape and direct Comprehensive Community Initiatives in an ongoing way. It does so by offering a case example of the Waterloo Region Immigrant Employment Network (WRIEN). The article begins by reviewing how participatory action research can encourage reflective practice. After the WRIEN case example is presented, we consider this example in light of collaborative evaluation l…
Integrating Immigrants into the Life of Canadian Urban Christian Congregations
In just one generation the cultural face of Canadian society has been transformed. The relative level of immigration has increased rapidly as has diversity among those immigrants. This article reports on the findings of a national survey that offers a baseline of how and to what extent local Canadian Christian congregations are responding to this cultural diversity. In particular, it explores how churches are integrating immigrants within the lif…
Assessing the Value of Inductive and Deductive Outcome Measures in Community-Based Programs
Evaluators of community-based programs frequently need to decide whether to adopt an inductive or deductive approach in developing quantitative outcome measures. This article explores this issue using a case example of a child anti-poverty program called City Kidz. Its recent evaluation combined an inductive and deductive approach to develop a survey. The article describes the City Kidz evaluation and its survey before assessing the value of the …
Canadian Christian Churches as Partners in Immigrant Settlement and Integration
This article discusses the role of Canadian Christian churches in immigrant settlement and integration and discusses implications for the settlement sector. A total of 34 denominations responded to an online survey. Findings show that many churches are intentionally involved in immigrant ministry, motivated by their Christian and social concern. Existing immigrant supports are wide ranging and holistic, include the unique contribution of immigran…
Christian Churches and Immigrant Support in Canada
Canada receives roughly 250,000 immigrants each year, and the government spends considerable resources on assisting them to settle and integrate into Canadian society through the agencies they support. Most of these new immigrants settle in Canada's largest cities, where churches meet specific needs that extend beyond the capacities of government agencies. In smaller centers, churches cover a wide range of services because few government supports…
Just Faith? A National Survey Connecting Faith and Justice within the Christian Reformed Church
Does the call to pursue justice live in the hearts and minds of contemporary Christians? If so, to what extent? In order to address these questions, our research team used a community-based research approach to investigate how Christians in a specific denomination (the Christian Reformed Church in North America) conceptualize the relationship between justice and faith, what priority justice holds in their lives, and the barriers and enablers they…
Learning from and with community-based and participatory action research
Participatory action research fits well with conflict resolution and peacebuilding; it is used by scholar-practitioners as part of field-based practice efforts that contribute to transforming conflict and add to scholarly knowledge. However, as Cynthia Chataway’s analysis of a participatory action research project undertaken with the Mohawk community of Kahnawake indicated, there are considerable constraints on mutual inquiry when it occurs in se…
Faith and Settlement Partnerships
This article explores partnerships between faith groups and government-funded immigrant settlement services. It does so by reporting on perspectives of community stakeholders through a survey across four communities in Ontario, Canada. Survey results demonstrate that the existence, benefits, and challenges of faith and settlement partnerships are recognized by settlement workers, faith leaders, and other stakeholders. Yet the results also indicat…
The Impact of Syrian Refugee Arrivals on Local Systems of Support in Canada
Life beyond Refuge
Canada is internationally recognized as a leader in welcoming refugee newcomers. However, there is limited evidence about how well refugee newcomers fare after arriving in Canada, and the effectiveness of resettlement services and supports. A system theory of change was developed to guide assessments of complexity across the refugee-serving sector that seek to investigate refugees’ lived experiences and evaluate practice across multiple levels. T…
Community-Based Evaluation When Localizing Sustainable Development Goals
The purpose of this practice note is to demonstrate how a community-based approach to evaluation can be used to support the evaluations of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals in local community settings. The authors argue that using a community-based evaluation approach that is stakeholder-driven, participatory, and action-oriented is one mechanism to address this challenge. They illustrate the utility of such an evaluation approach…
Sociology (21 works) · Political science (18 works) · Psychology (16 works) · Public relations (13 works) · Medicine (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Mental health (9 works) · Mental Health and Patient Involvement (9 works) · Community Health and Development (8 works) · Homelessness and Social Issues (8 works)