I was fortunate to spend some time in Sweden last year attending a workshop. One of the things I came to realize was that there is a difference between how Swedish academics and US academics approach research, especially human subjects research. For instance, based on my understanding, all human subjects research has to be approved by a central review board (central for all of Sweden) and it is not free to request project review. This has the result of encouraging secondary data analysis, by the way. I also think some qualitative research is automatically exempt. In contrast, based on my admittedly limited experience, despite some variations among US universities, it is relatively easy and essentially free to get ethical board approval for anyone who has a faculty appointment, and students have equivalent access to approval given faculty support for their project.
Thinking about this today in the context of some research ideas I have seen lately from students in my classes, has made me consider the potential role of this very accessible review process in research proposals. My particular concern of late has been seeing proposals that reflect researcher interest or curiosity - always a good place to start, I believe - but seem to not necessarily have any other value. There is no obvious 'so what' to some proposals. "Better understanding of" might or might not be important - and I will offer for public health purposes is less important when there is not an actual or potential associated health concern. I hate to create a hierarchy of research value, but given some serious enduring or emerging concerns that include chronic disease and drug abuse, research directions that are greatly limited in applicability seem like they should be lower priority since there are always limited resources. I think that two things encourage a possible trend toward interesting but not necessarily useful research.
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AuthorI am Sheryl L. Chatfield, Ph.D, C.T.R.S. I am a member of the faculty in the College of Public Health at Kent State University. I also Co-coordinate the Graduate Certificate in Qualitative Research and I am a member of the Design Innovation Team at Kent State. Archives
February 2024
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