Turning Ideas into Research. Barbara Fawcett
problem, or area for attention, they can take place between representatives of different sectors, and they can, importantly, include service users or consumers. Partnerships can also provide strategic opportunities for research funding, priority setting, idea development and the carriage of ‘research agendas’ that can sustain and support practice and policy development in the health and social work sectors. This chapter examines the importance of partnership in research and looks at how meaningful and workable partnerships can be formed and maintained. It also appraises possible problem areas associated with power imbalances and the operation of particular political agendas.
Exploring partnerships in research
The prospect of undertaking a piece of research from beginning to end is a daunting one – often so daunting in fact that many students and practitioners hesitate to pursue the development of good ideas into researchable projects. One manageable approach is to think about the research task through the lens of partnerships with others. Research partnerships occur when individuals come together in different ways to pursue research. This may include collaborations between researchers; relationships between researchers and all those engaged in the research process; and relationships between researchers and knowledge.
These three relationships will be explored in some detail, but they are by no means exclusive, as the research endeavour involves many fundamental relationships. In considering the initial engagement with research, Alston and Bowles (2012) and D’Cruz and Jones (2014: 13) suggest that the identification of ‘key players’, and the answers to some specific questions, contribute to the initial work that must be undertaken by researchers to build both the conceptual and critical foundations of the project. These questions are: who is/are the researcher/s; who are the people being researched; what organizations are involved; who will benefit from the research; and who will be influenced by the research? The answers to these questions will also identify key relationships that exist beforehand or will need to be developed to pursue the research and the implementation of any outcomes.
Partnerships between researchers can take many forms. They can range from a simple partnership or collaboration with a colleague interested in the same area of inquiry about an aspect of their work, to very formal, contractual partnerships that involve significant research funding to study an identified problem or situation. For workers who lack research experience or the confidence to undertake an individual project, partnerships provide opportunities to learn from others; to learn together; and to affirm practice knowledge in the interpretation of data and the suitability of research design. Ideally, partnerships or research collaborations provide opportunities for the strengths and experiences of individual members to be shared and utilized for the common research pursuit.
In considering research partnerships, educational researchers Anderson and Freebody (2014: 5) state:
when we use the term partnership research … we are referring to a partnership between a researcher and a research context, and the people who associate with that context. Although classically in education, partnership research occurs between researchers and teachers, it could also involve partnerships with schools, government departments, community education centres, outdoor education centres, businesses or any organization concerned with education.
The expression of research partnerships in these terms can be used in many other fields of practice, including the health and social care sectors, and is a foundational component of new and inclusive ways of thinking about research, research orientations and the generation of knowledge. We will turn now to some specific types of research partnerships.
Academic–practitioner partnerships
Academic–practitioner partnerships are now a feature of the contemporary academic environment, with universities openly encouraging partnerships with industry. In the human services, health and social care sectors, collaborative and inclusive relationships have taken on distinctive qualities.
The academic–practitioner partnership draws on the strengths of each to complete the research. The expertise of practitioners is essential in informing the design of the study, enabling access to the sample group or data and the interpretation of the results. The expertise of the academic researcher is essential in the preparation of the ethics committee application, ensuring the methodological rigour of the study and the data analysis, and providing support in the final documentation of the studies for publication.
An example of academic–practitioner partnerships is where workers join an established research team within their workplace. Collaborations between social work and psychology within the cancer field have been significant in the developing discipline of psycho-oncology. In Australia, like many developed countries, funding for cancer research into the causes, treatment and management of the disease has been a significant priority of government for many years. Recently funding opportunities for research that involves bio-psychosocial approaches have been provided by organizations such as state-based cancer councils and cancer institutes. The interdisciplinary nature of these research partnerships has provided opportunities to explore both bio-psychosocial and inclusive and participatory understandings as part of the research process. The following example illustrates this type of partnership in the workplace. At a large metropolitan teaching hospital in Sydney, members of an interdisciplinary gynaeoncology team joined a practice reference group for a small funded study investigating the effectiveness of self-help groups as a support mechanism for cancer survivors and their families (Butow et al., 2005). The practice reference group included medical, nursing, psychology, social work and consumer representatives working in partnership with university academics who led the research. This group played an important role in the analysis and interpretation of data drawing on their practice knowledge and expertise. Their participation in the group helped develop linkages between practice, research and policy, and recommendations from the study were made to funding bodies to improve policy and practice approaches in this area.
The research partnership has resulted in further funding being received by the group for a range of mixed method studies, for example, Hodgkinson et al. (2007a, 2007b) and Hobbs (2008). A number of publications in refereed national and international health, psychology and social work journals encouraged all members to write for publication with authorship attributed in terms of the article development, the theme being documented and the journal to which the manuscript was submitted. The publication goals that were incorporated into the project enabled the trustworthiness and rigour of the studies to be assured through both internal and external peer review.1
Researcher Reflection 2.1
Thinking about research opportunities
To what extent are there opportunities within your workplace to join research teams as a practitioner member?
To what extent are there opportunities to develop academic–practitioner partnerships drawing on the research expertise of academics and the expertise of practitioners?
Within your workplace are there research initiatives currently under way that would benefit from the inclusion of interdisciplinary practice perspectives?
Are there policy–practice initiatives that might benefit from research from interdisciplinary approaches?
Student–supervisor research partnerships
Research partnerships and collaborations may also assist new researchers to develop a research reputation or ‘track record’ in a particular field. The domain of academic research provides a useful example of a scaffolded approach with higher research degree students working under the supervision of a principal investigator or supervisor. In this situation, students have made a deliberate decision to enrol in a postgraduate research degree to pursue a piece of research and/or to begin a research career. Even within the ‘research nurturing’ context of academia, the challenges in establishing a research track record and attracting research grants are recognized. Terms such as ‘early-career researchers’ and ‘track record relative to opportunity’ are common.