This article describes the methodological strategy created during the research carried out for a doctoral degree, with Institutional Analysis in Collective Health being used as the theoretical and methodological framework. The article is thus meant as a contribution to the debate on methodological approaches to the relationships between researchers and their act of researching. During the investigation, action-research operated as a crossroad between intervention and research, along a path we refer to as intervention-research-action. The research stages and the theoretical-methodological production were constructed concurrently, in a process mediated by the knowledge and questions of the subjects related to this investigation. Knowledge production in the area of oral health care was made through two articulated processes of intervention-action: one of the researcher in and within the group, other of the participants in the group, namely professionals in public health in their everyday life work in oral health care.
Qualitative Research; Groups; Oral Health; Collective Health; Health Services