Action research a Handbook for Students

participating in the project and protecting their premises. Similar actions were 
undertaken by the researchers from CARUDEP (Catholic Archdiocesan Rural 
and Urban Development Programme) who, as part of the action research project 
dedicated to the adaptation to climate changes occurring in the region, together 
with the villagers from Kwaikong in Nigeria, created a map of stakeholders — 
both those influenced by these changes and those who could influence them 
[Nigerian Environmental Study/Action Team (NEST), Woodley 2011].
Chevalier and Buckles [2013] suggest various strategies of identifying 
stakeholders in action research projects:
• Strategy based on opinions of experts, e.g. researchers, members of 
the organisation studied who have extensive knowledge about the or-
ganisation’s environment, so they can indicate key stakeholders for 
the project;
• Strategy based on the researcher’s own selection. Relying on the anal-
ysis of the organisation’s operations and by organising open meetings 
for everyone interested in the project, the researcher selects their (co-)
participants in the research;
• The snowball strategy, in which the researcher invites two or three peo-
ple to the project who, in turn, are asked to indicate the next people who 
should be included, and those people suggest more participants whose 
contribution they deem valuable for the success of the action research 
project;
• Strategy based on widely available data and records. This enables the 
researcher to take a comprehensive look at the community studied and 
invite the representatives of all groups that form it to the project.
The next stage of the stakeholder analysis process is characterizing them. Re-
searchers advise that it should be based on three categories: legitimisation of 
action, level of power and level of interest in the problem [Reid 2000; Cheva-
lier, Buckles 2013; Coghlan, Brydon-Miller 2014]. In this way, the researcher 

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can determine what impact particular stakeholders may have on the conducted 
project and then, how to build relationships with them.
1.2.2. Building a relationship: challenges and action strategies
The process of building relationships always involves the issue of identifying 
shared values around which mutual relations can be shaped. The value which is 
the most pronounced in the context of action research is trust. Researchers em-
phasise that trust is, in fact, the foundation of valuable action research. Accord-
ing to Ortrun Zuber-Skerritt [2005, p. 54] “honesty, and respect are pre-condi-
tions of the search for truth/truths.”
As we have already underlined, very often the researcher is an outsider, so 
they must first earn the trust of the members of the organisation participat-
ing in the research. This process is not easy. Reid [2000] emphasises that often 
the researcher is automatically assigned the role of a consultant — supplier of 
certain services which imposes a certain distance between them and the (co-)