I have been involved in some commercially funded research for the last few years. My advice to any academic researcher considering this is to approach such opportunities with a great deal of caution. Corporate ethnography, that might focus on how users use things (Microsoft uses ethnographers) might be safest, since these approaches are designed to learn more rather than to change behavior. Research that is focused on behavior change can be more problematic , especially if there is profit associated with behavior change through increased demand for a product or service. I am wrapping up a project during the next several months and walking away with some benefits, that include fewer publications than I'd like, presentations to an audience that I do not necessarily consider my primary target audience, and a great deal of experience doing actual intervention research with humans. The latter is of course a positive; actual research 'product' - papers and presentations - has been disappointing as I think I could have made far more progress working with a team consisting of people with the same or at least more similar priorities. Profit vs. public health are not always compatible goals. Some graduate students have had opportunities to observe and participate in research, and again this has had a mixed result since this work did not always reflect a systematic approach to a clear research question and I would prefer to expose students to "best" or at least "pretty good" practices. One of the biggest challenges has been the structure of the team - it is not always clear who reports to whom and who is responsible for what. For an employed or contracted researcher, the general benefit is availability of funding or other resources. But the extent to which a given funder is interested in responding to (and facilitating dissemination of) null or negative findings, and what pressures are exerted on researchers when those are reported, is likely highly variable. I have not had to deal with efforts to suppress publications although there is lag time to allow for review for presence of proprietary information. And to be honest, there have been suggestions that some wording be changed - but these suggestions have not been followed.
Also the expectations related to reporting and oversight among commercially funded research likely varies a lot; in my particular instance there were many demands on my time and expectations for frequent reports that in retrospect I see as an interference with, rather than a benefit to, the research process. Will I work with corporate or commercial funders again? This depends entirely on what is given and what is expected in return. I'd be happy to take some equipment such as fitness trackers or other things that help assess participation in physical activity in return for an acknowledgment in a paper and maybe having a website link to my research. But I do not think it is a good idea to have commercial partners involved in the implementation details of human subjects research, and this is the advice I will share with my students.
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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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