Community Engagement Methods Related to Veteran Studies: A Scoping Review

Community engagement in research enhances a community's ability to address its own needs and challenges while ensuring that researchers understand community priorities. Some confusion exists about the definition of community engagement in the context of veteran research. The purpose of this study was to search the literature to identify common applications of community engagement in U.S. veterans’ research and to determine how and at what stage veterans were involved in the research process. A systematic scoping review was conducted using CINAHL Plus, Wiley Cochrane Library, Education Source, ERIC, APA PsycInfo, National Library of Medicine PubMed, ProQuest Social Services Abstracts, and SocIndex by two independent investigators. Forty-two of 1,977 studies from initial searches were included in this review. From these studies, we identified two aspects of veterans’ involvement in research characterized as “community engagement”: (a) veterans as participants and (b) veterans as partners in the research process. There is a need to encourage veterans’ engagement and to standardize reporting of their engagement in the various phases of the research process.