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Action Researchers’ Perceptions of Barriers. Take a short survey please!

Dr. Miriana Ferrara of the Department of Business Management & Innovation Systems at University of Salerno is interested in action researchers’ perceptions of barriers.  This study investigates the barriers that hinder the adoption of Action Research.

Despite growing calls for impactful, practice-oriented research, Action Research remains a marginal methodology in academia. The study aims to examine how barriers are perceived and how they interact systemically rather than in isolation.

You can find the short survey questionnaire here: https://forms.gle/K8W4UVP4DtQqCrqZ9

The study adopts a convergent parallel mixed-methods design. Quantitative data are being collected via a structured questionnaire with five-point Likert scales, supplemented by open-ended questions for qualitative content analysis. Particularly, the questionnaire asked respondents to evaluate each AR barrier identified from the literature (relational, methodological, career, and structural) and then provide an explanation for their choice. So far academic researchers primarily from European universities, reached through professional networks including EURAM have answered. The gender distribution was balanced, with a high concentration of profiles in the early or middle stages of their careers. Particularly well represented are those in Italy and Poland. Descriptive statistics, Spearman correlation analysis, and systematic qualitative coding were applied in parallel and integrated during the interpretation phase.

Key findings include:

1. Action Research is widely known but poorly understood

A striking disconnect exists between declared familiarity with Action Research and actual methodological competence. While 67.3% of respondents claimed familiarity with Action Research, only 36.5% correctly identified a canonical Action Research cycle (Planning–Acting–Observing–Reflecting). A notable share confused it with managerial quality tools such as the PDCA (Plan–Do–Check–Act) cycle, an epistemologically distinct framework. This pattern is consistent with the Dunning–Kruger effect: respondents declaring the highest levels of self-perceived knowledge (level 5) showed correct identification rates of only 40%, lower than those declaring level 4 (77.8%). The data suggest that Action Research is widely known but poorly understood, with widespread conceptual ambiguity that may inadvertently delegitimize its application.

2. Structural and Career Barriers as Primary Inhibitors

Among the four barrier categories examined (i.e., relational, methodological, career-related, and structural) structural and career barriers received the highest perceived relevance. Bureaucratic procedures (M = 3.86), focus on productivity and time pressures (M = 3.80), and researcher workloads (M = 3.69) all scored above the scale midpoint with strong negative skewness, indicating widespread consensus. These findings suggest that the primary obstacles to AR adoption are not epistemological mistrust of the methodology itself, but rather the institutional logics governing academic careers, particularly the “publish or perish” culture, short-term performance metrics, and misalignment between Action Research’s iterative timelines and evaluation systems favouring rapid publication outputs. These systems privilege rapid, positivist research designs over the time-intensive, iterative, and reflexive cycles required by Action Research.

3. Systemic Interdependence of Barriers

The correlation analysis (Spearman’s rho) reveals that Action Research barriers do not operate as independent variables but as a mutually reinforcing system. Key associations include: priority misalignment is strongly correlated with methodological rigor (ρ = 0.516, p < 0.01) and bureaucratic procedures (ρ = 0.469, p < 0.01), suggesting that relational friction amplifies perceptions of methodological inadequacy; power imbalance correlates highly with productivity and time pressures (ρ = 0.593, p < 0.01), linking institutional constraints to the dynamics of researcher–practitioner relationships; and limited academic acceptance of AR is strongly associated with researcher workloads (ρ = 0.484, p < 0.01) and productivity focus (ρ = 0.570, p < 0.01), indicating that career barriers and evaluation systems together reduce Action Research’s perceived legitimacy.

This study offers three main advances to the Action Research literature. First, it moves beyond the prevailing additive view of barriers by proposing a relational and systemic interpretation. Second, it advances the debate on AR methodological rigor, showing that its perception is contextually and institutionally conditioned rather than intrinsic to the methodology. Third, and most importantly, it redefines the research–practice gap as a structural misalignment between AR’s epistemological logic and the institutional systems governing academic legitimacy.

The main limitations of the study are linked to: 1. The sample size, 2. The geographical concentration of respondents. The sample size, while consistent with exploratory studies, limits the generalizability of findings. More significantly, the geographical concentration of the sample in Italy and Poland constrains cross-national comparability and may reflect context-specific institutional cultures that do not generalize to other European or non-European academic systems.

If you’re reading this blog do us all a great favour and participate in the short survey!

You can find the questionnaire here: https://forms.gle/K8W4UVP4DtQqCrqZ9