Session: Reconsidering Standard Concepts: Insight, Conscientious Objection, and Race
Interpersonal Communication in Community-Engaged Research
Thursday, October 12, 2023
4:00 PM – 5:15 PM ET
Location: Chasseur (Third Floor)
The recent participatory turn in health research reflects the recognition that researchers and participant protection regimes have too often treated minoritized individuals and communities solely as moral patients. Community-engaged research (CEnR) is premised on a commitment to equitable collaboration. This vision of inclusion moves beyond seeking to recruit participants from minoritized communities. Rather, it recognizes individuals and communities as agentic actors and requires that their values, experiences, and knowledge be incorporated into the research process in tangible ways. Surprisingly, communication has received little attention to date in the CEnR literature, and the reports that do exist have tended to focus on community dissemination. Conveying study results to participants and communities is an important corrective to the problem of extractive research, but research concerning effective, respectful communication within CEnR teams is also needed. This talk explores the role of interpersonal communication in CEnR. It begins from the understanding, based in critical discourse studies, that communication is not only a means of conveying content: it is also how we act out the values of respect and concern, develop trust, build community, and learn from others – or fail to do so. Skillful, ethically grounded communication is thus essential to equitable collaboration and justice in CEnR, with important contributions to achieving goals of inclusion, productivity, and community-led applications of results. Drawing connections from the conceptual literature to research practice, I will share lessons learned from more than 10 years of work with university-based investigators and Yup’ik (Alaska Native) community advisors in southwest Alaska.