January 27, 2025

Researchers from the nation’s four Regional Rural Development Centers (RRDCs) who adapted traditional community-engaged research approaches for an entirely virtual setting have shared their key takeaways and lessons learned in a paper published in Community Development, a peer-reviewed journal of the Community Development Society. The methods they developed can be used by practitioners and researchers to engage with communities at any scale to understand community needs and iteratively co-create strategies to address them. 

The paper, published online last month as an open-access resource, describes a novel approach developed by the RRDCs to conduct a rapid assessment of U.S. rural communities at both regional and national scales following the COVID-19 pandemic. Their goal was to identify the most urgent post-pandemic issues facing rural America, and how best to target recovery investments for meaningful impacts in U.S. rural communities. 

“Traditionally, community needs assessments have been carried out through in-person formats, such as town-hall style meetings or focus groups. However, in response to this emerging national need, we wanted to hear from a much wider audience in a much shorter period of time than traditional methods would allow,” said Jason Entsminger, University of Maine Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation and State Extension Specialist for Small Business, who led the study while serving as the Associate Director of the Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development based at Penn State. 

“We found that by adapting traditional approaches to an entirely virtual format, we could conduct this research at a very broad scale while still engaging the participation and perspectives of rural voices,” Entsminger said. 

The RRDC team conducted the assessment from Fall 2021 to Spring 2022, using a two-phase process that engaged key stakeholders working in the field of rural development across the U.S. During the first phase, they administered an online survey, which focused on several topics thought to be important to rural recovery, ranging from physical infrastructure and public services to community vibrancy and health. The RRDCs distributed the survey to stakeholder groups through numerous channels, and participants were encouraged to invite members of their networks to complete the survey.  

The survey received 680 responses, which shed light on the perceived strengths, challenges, and opportunities in rural communities. The researchers used these findings to inform the second phase, which was composed of eight virtual listening sessions. More than 20 members of the national Cooperative Extension System facilitated and documented these dialogues, during which participants were asked to share their thoughts on the types of investments that were needed in rural America, and to prioritize them by their urgency. 

Throughout the process, the team shared findings with selected stakeholder groups, and incorporated stakeholder feedback into the design and analysis of subsequent activities and materials. The mixed-method, multi-stage, and iterative aspects of their approach can enhance other types of participatory research, said co-author John J. Green, Director of the Southern Rural Development Center based at Mississippi State University.

“Traditional in-person community engagement is important, but a limitation is that it often generates input only from the most vocal stakeholders. This virtual approach allows for many different stakeholders to engage through various touch points,” Green said. “The team was able to facilitate communication across stakeholder groups and helped to reveal opportunities for collaboration. I can think of any number of complex issues that would benefit from these types of outcomes.” 

The authors — which include Renee Wiatt and Zuzana Bednarik of the North Central Regional Center for Rural Development based at Purdue University — also discuss some of the challenges they encountered, including the difficulty of building trust between researchers and participants in a virtual setting, noting that trust-building may be especially important when engaging with historically marginalized or underserved audiences. The broadband and technology skills required for participation in virtual formats is another limitation of the virtual approach.  

“Despite the challenges and limitations, this project provides an example of a virtual research approach that allows for community engagement across stakeholder groups and geographic scales,” Entsminger said. “It also resulted in local, state, and national impacts, including informing the research and outreach agendas of many rural-serving organizations.”

The year-long initiative was a collaboration among all four RRDCs and engaged the efforts of the entire RRDC staff. The project described here was funded New Technologies for Agricultural Extension grant program funded by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) and administered by the Extension Foundation. 

The RRDCs are regionally focused centers funded by USDA NIFA through the U.S. Congress annual appropriations process. The RRDCs conduct research and outreach programming that builds the capacity of the Land-Grant University System to address crucial needs in our nation’s rural communities. Learn more about the RRDCs.