            
 |
 |
| "Rituals and Research Ethics: Using One Community’s Experience to Reconsider the Ways that Communities and Researchers Build Sustainable Partnerships" |
| by: Linda Silka, UMASS Lowell (2001) |
| Published on: 1/1/2002 |
As work on community-based participatory research attests, one of the most pressing issues about research is how it can be done so as to bear directly on people’s lives. Urgent discussions are now taking place within the research community about questions such as who owns research and how the impact of research can be increased. When researchers discuss these issues, attention often turns to how work can be communicated beyond academic journals and to considerations of the broader dissemination of results. This “end of the tailpipe” approach is telling in how it construes the research process and what it says about the perceived role of the community in that process. The problem with this approach is not merely that the community is seen as having a role only late in the research enterprise. The community role is also construed too narrowly. The crucial issue is not how results can be shared but how nonscientists can be involved from the very outset in research so that the ultimate findings are useful to people’s lives and shared ownership of research becomes a given. In other words, how can sustainability of use be built into every step of the research process? This issue has been explored at great length within the democratization of science movement, but here we want to consider the many implications of this issue for research and community-university research partnerships. |
Download:
|
|
