Encountering Correctional Populations. Kathleen A. Fox
on to help them work together to complete their longer-term research agreement. This increased the workload for people at the funding agency who were supposed to be monitoring multiple sites. Moreover, the difficulties clearly made the experience less enjoyable for all involved, pointing to the importance of preventing such problems if possible.
Given that building rapport with front-line staff members is key for them to buy-in to the research, we begin this section with specific tips that have worked for us to build and maintain rapport with correctional staff:
•Maintain open communication and ongoing discussions throughout the project, which allows researchers and staff to continually work out issues as they arise. In our projects, we regularly made efforts to ensure the relationship succeeded. As with many multiyear projects, things often changed and open and regular communication made adaptation easier. It also helped to have regular conversations at other times, when there were no issues (have dinner together, ride to meetings together, etc.), because we had broader perspectives on each other than just the daily activities of working on a research project. One of the authors had standing weekly meeting to discuss research-related issues on projects.
•Give practitioners specific information and guidance regarding what you would like from them each time you give a request. For example, it is better to say something like “Please review the survey questions to make sure the wording is appropriate and that we have included all relevant topics” instead of something like “Let me know what you think of the survey.”
•Be careful not to undermine staff by making comments or giving the perception that you are aligned too much with offenders (in an effort to gain rapport with participants). That is, try to remain and appear as neutral as possible during the research project. Make sure staff and administrators know you are there to learn from them, not judge them or take sides.
•Make clear that you will be honest in your findings, but that you are not involved in the project to get a specific result, and keep this promise. For example, if you find offenders have negative perceptions of how they are treated inside, assure them that you will report the findings fairly, maybe including perceptions of both offenders and staff. Of course, if you witness actual abuse, your IRB will determine whether researchers are mandated to report it, but this approach is very different from going into a setting with an agenda to find abuse.
•The practitioners and research team should have mutual respect for each other, for their roles, and for differing priorities and pressures, allowing for compromise and discussion about issues rather than both sides relentlessly standing their ground when opinions differ.
•Give line staff who are relied upon for continual submission of data positive reinforcement for completing research tasks (e.g., we used small tokens of appreciation such as a weekly sticker chart and candy or bags of chips for those who turned in all forms on time each month) rather than punishment for not doing it. We did not express frustration to staff when they failed to turn in forms, only continual reminders. We found that peer pressure—seeing who got stickers and candy—actually helped improve weekly submission of data forms (Lane, Turner, and Flores 2004).1
Regardless of whether staff are participants in the research, one of the most important lessons is that researchers should focus on the similarities between themselves and the staff rather than differences (e.g., especially not educational, expertise, and attitude differences, unless absolutely necessary to gain access). This helps increase comfort levels. Despite our own advanced degrees, staff members have a lot to teach us about what happens in the everyday world of the justice system. Researchers do not want to alienate staff. These staff often can grant researchers access to a wealth of data that would be off-limits without their connections. In addition, they may be more willing to collect additional data if they feel like they and the researchers are working together as a team on a project rather than having research forced on them. Of course, in some projects, researchers can collect all the data themselves. Yet, in others, without staff cooperation, much data will not exist if staff does not cooperate. Researchers cannot be with every staff member every day and must often rely upon these key people to be honest about their activities and to write them down.
Correctional staff are also critically important because they are often the gatekeepers to their client caseload. This is particularly critical in studies of juvenile correctional populations because juveniles are impressionable, given that they may be more likely than adults to look to the person managing their case for guidance on what to do. For example, in our SOCP study, we had the case manager (probation officer, mental health counselor, etc.) tell the youths that we would be contacting them to set up an interview. Case managers were supposed to just tell clients to expect to hear from our research team and the managers were not involved in recruitment specifically. However, they sometimes added their thoughts. Some of these case managers were very positive with the youths, indicating that it was no big deal or would be fun, for example. However, one probation officer regularly told his clients that we would be contacting them but then followed it with some version of “But you don’t have to do it” or “Don’t worry about it.” This happened before we were able to remind the youths of the reasons for the study and tell them ourselves about the voluntary nature of their participation (i.e., give them our own informed consent). In this particular situation, we asked the supervisor to ask the officer to approach it differently, but we were unable to change the situation. Consequently, we were able to complete very few interviews with youths on his particular caseload, which meant we had a lot of missing interview data from this group. The bottom line, though, is that this probation officer saw our study as a hassle (because his clients were in the control group and not receiving services) and did not buy-in to the value of the research. He remained hard to convince, although we did work to gain buy-in from the other probation officers in charge of the control group in general.
One way to increase staff buy-in is to listen to and address their concerns. This can be challenging because researchers often do the negotiating with higher-level administrators or heads of agencies, but must work directly with the line staff. Avoiding power struggles even within agencies can be delicate. As one example of how we worked with line staff in the SOCP study, we listened to staff express concern that they would have to complete additional forms that we created for data collection (e.g., contact forms indicating how often they contacted the youths as well as why and where) when they were already overwhelmed with work. While we continued to have the staff for the SOCP complete these forms to document staff contact with youth (see appendices B and C), we created an actual stamp with wooden handle and stamp pad for the control probation officers that allowed them to enter the data in their chronological notes in the youths’ files, and the research team then coded the information into contact sheets for data entry (see figure 2). The managers of their units also agreed to allow this information to serve as their records for the typical files, unless other relevant information needed to be added to it. That is, we made it as easy as we could to get the data from staff without imposing too much on their time or daily activities.
Figure 2. Contact stamp for staff with client caseloads in the control (routine probation) group in SOCP. Source: Authors
Gaining buy-in from peripheral agencies or staff (e.g., people who manage clients in the control group or who provide only a few services, such as contracted educational or drug services) may be tough in many projects. We recommend having initial meetings with the group to describe the importance of the study in detail and answer questions, but also maintaining regular, ongoing conversations with relevant staff to ensure all is still going well, monitor their “compliance,” quell any concerns, and so on. If there are not researchers on site, we recommend scheduling regular site visits to ensure research staff can monitor daily activities. It also helps at the outset to (1) agree to measure information that would help them or their own agency and (2) to give them regular feedback on the results. One group that often can understand the research value are agency leaders, because they can be convinced that data results can be useful for selling the program or garnering more resources. Sometimes, especially in paramilitary organizations like many corrections agencies, it is helpful to get buy-in from leaders