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. One is the abundance of publication outlets, especially for those who are willing to pay. (And that is not the kind of 'greed' I planned to discuss in this post.) This means there is a constant need for new articles and presentations. I started a 'trolling' folder in my faculty email account just to keep track of some of the daily (at least) requests I get to submit an article or agree to be a keynote speaker. (Really? Me? I am junior faculty at a university I love but I have to say it is not in the highest category for research; additionally, I do social science - not hard science - research, a lot of it qualitative - and to date have not 'discovered' anything earth shattering. What special information or expertise do I have to offer as a keynote to any health or research conference? The answer is "none" but I imagine the trolls think I might be willing to pay something to get an impressive line on my CV and for some that constitutes a 'win win.')
The other issue, as I noted at the beginning of this post, is the fact that IRB approval is readily available. I hate to criticize this because it has been very helpful for me since I started to do self-directed research as a graduate student back in about 2010. But I have not seen IRBs question whether a project is worthwhile - whether institutional resources that include time should be used; whether it benefits the community or the field, etc. There are standard questions about risks and benefits to participants and most people provide essentially canned responses to these. But, as with some other things in higher income countries, we have an abundance of research approval available through the public university system, which I fear sometimes leads to 'greedy' use of it!
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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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