73 Sharing and Consuming Research

At this point, we expect that you have completed your project and are ready to share your results. This chapter will guide you through sharing your research with academic, professional, and lay audiences. Additionally, we will cover your future role as a consumer of research as part of evidence-based practice, and share techniques for integrating research into practice after you graduate. We’ll also discuss some of the barriers students face in accessing information in the practice world.

Sharing it all: The good, the bad, and the ugly

Because conducting social work research is a scholarly pursuit and because social work researchers generally aim to reach a true understanding of social processes, it is crucial that we share all aspects of our research—the good, the bad, and the ugly. Doing so helps ensure that others will understand, use, and effectively critique our work. It also honors our ethical commitment to our profession and our research participants who shared their data with us. In order to meet your ethical obligations as a  researcher, challenge yourself to answer the following questions:

• Why did I conduct this research?
• How did I conduct this research?
• For whom did I conduct this research?
• What conclusions can I reasonably draw from this research?
• Knowing what I know now, what would I do differently?
• What are the limitations of this project?

Understanding why you conducted your research will help you be honest—with yourself and your audience—about your own personal interest, investments, or biases with respect to the work. Starting where you are is an effective way to begin a research project. While this is true, starting where you are requires that, as a researcher, you need to be honest with yourself and your readers about your thoughts and biases on the issue and why you have chosen to conduct this research. Being able to clearly communicate how you conducted your research is also important. This means being honest and transparent about your data collection methods, sample and sampling strategy, and data analysis.

The third question in the list is designed to help you articulate who the major stakeholders are in your research. Of course, the researcher is a stakeholder. Additional stakeholders might include funders, research participants, or others who share something in common with your research subjects (e.g., members of some community where you conducted research or members of the same social group, such as parents or athletes, upon whom you conducted your research). Stakeholders may want to briefed on the results of your study. Often, researchers will offer access to the results as a benefit of participating in a project. In addition to these more informal venues, think about what formal outlets there are for your research.

The fourth question should help you think about what you found, the often tedious steps you took to make sure you followed the scientific method, and the resulting strengths of your study. Finally, the last two questions are designed to make you think about potential weaknesses in your work and how future research might build from or improve upon your work. Presenting your research honestly requires admitting the limitations of your study but arguing why the results are important anyway. All scientific studies contain limitations and are open to questioning.

Dissemination

Dissemination refers to “a planned process that involves consideration of target audiences and the settings in which research findings are to be received and, where appropriate, communicating and interacting with wider policy and…service audiences in ways that will facilitate research uptake in decision-making processes and practice” (Wilson, Petticrew, Calnan, & Natareth, 2010, p. 91). In other words, dissemination of research findings involves careful planning, thought, consideration of target audiences, and communication with those audiences. Writing up results from your research and having others take notice are two entirely different propositions. In fact, the general rule of thumb is that people will not take notice unless you encourage them to do so.

Disseminating your findings successfully requires determining who your audience is, where your audience is, and how to reach them. When considering who your audience is, think about who is likely to take interest in your work. Your audience might include those who do not express enthusiastic interest but might nevertheless benefit from an awareness of your research. Your research participants and those who share some characteristics in common with your participants are likely to have some interest in what you’ve discovered in the course of your research. Other scholars who study similar topics are another obvious audience for your work. Perhaps there are policymakers who should take note of your work. Organizations that do work in an area related to the topic of your research are another possibility. Finally, any and all inquisitive and engaged members of the public represent a possible audience for your work.

Where your audience is should be fairly obvious once you think about it for a little while. You know where your research participants are because you’ve studied them. You can find interested scholars on your campus (e.g., perhaps you could offer to present your findings at a campus event); at professional conferences; and via publications, such as professional organizations’ newsletters (an often-overlooked source for sharing findings in brief form) and scholarly journals. Policymakers include your state and federal representatives who, at least in theory, should be available to hear a constituent speak on matters of policy interest. Perhaps you’re already aware of organizations that do work in an area related to your research topic, but if not, a simple web search should help you identify possible organizational audiences for your work. Disseminating your findings to the public more generally could take any number of forms: a letter to the editor of the local newspaper, a blog, or even a post or two on your social media channels.

Finally, determining how to reach your audiences will vary according to which audience you wish to reach. Your strategy should be determined by the norms or rules associated with each audience. For example, editors at scholarly journals provide author submission instructions that clearly define requirements for anyone wishing to disseminate their work via a particular journal. The same is true for newspaper editorials—check your newspaper’s website for details about how to format and submit letters to the editor. If you wish to reach out to your political representatives, a call to their offices or a simple web search should tell you how to do so.

Whether you act on any or all of these suggestions is ultimately your decision. But if you’ve conducted high-quality research and you have findings that are likely to be of interest to people besides yourself, I would argue that it is your duty as a scholar and a social worker to share those findings. In sum, disseminating findings involves the following three steps:

• Determine who your audience is
• Identify where your audience is
• Discover how best to reach them

Tailoring your message to your audience

Once you are able to articulate what to share, you must decide with whom to share it. While you would never alter your actual findings for different audiences, understanding who your audience is will help you frame your research in a way that is most meaningful to that audience. Certainly, the most obvious candidates with whom you’ll share your work are other social scientists. If you are conducting research for a class project, your main “audience” will probably be your professor. Perhaps you’ll also share your work with other students in the class or with family and friends.

What is more challenging, and possibly a little scary, is sharing your research with the wider world. Sharing with professional audiences is designed not only to bring your work to the attention of other social scientists and academics, but also other social workers or professionals who practice in areas related to your research. For example, scientists are probably the most interested in a study’s methods, particularly statistical tests or qualitative data analysis frameworks. Sharing your work with this audience will require you to talk about your methods and data in a different way than you would with other audiences.

Many outlets for sharing your research will not let you do so until your results have undergone peer review, which is a formal process in which other esteemed researchers and experts ensure your work meets the standards and expectations of the professional field. Peer review is used for both conference presentations and journal publications, though not all presentations and articles are peer-reviewed. Scientists who evaluate your work will be looking to make sure that your conclusions follow logically from your data, your design minimized error and threats to validity, and your review and analysis of the literature is reasonable and thorough.

In my short career as a social work researcher, I’ve conducted two major projects. The first was on policies for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) and the service delivery systems within Medicaid. After we completed the data analysis, we sought publication in academic journals related to our topic, like the Journal of Disability Policy Studies and Journal of Intellectual and Developmental Disability. In this way, our work would be shared more widely among other scholars and academics who study IDD and Medicaid policy.

Helpfully, these journals were also interdisciplinary. Why limit sharing our results to just social workers? Nurses, government administrators, client advocates, and countless others could make use of our data in their work. It is important for social workers to look outside the discipline when they share their results. Look back at your literature review and note the journal articles that commonly publish on your topic. Not only should you consider submitting your results to these journals, but you should consider subscribing to them (in print or electronically) to stay current on the literature in your topic area as part of evidence-based practice.

The second topic I’ve conducted research on is open educational resources (OER). This textbook is an example of OER, as it is a freely available resource that allows anyone to customize and redistribute the content.  Hopefully, this will bring closer scrutiny to the issue of textbook costs and OER as an alternative to costly, commercial textbooks, access codes, and other required resources.

Constraints for dissemination of student research products

Research accomplishes nothing if it does not affect the communities and populations being studied. This can pose a challenge for student projects, however, if they are not reviewed and approved by their institution’s IRB. Without IRB approval, public dissemination of research findings cannot happen. Student projects are often granted certain exceptions from the normal IRB research review process, as the results are confined to the classroom. Just like you can talk about practice situations in a practice class, you can talk about your research in a research class. To disseminate publicly and truly impact the community, you should check with your professor and IRB to make sure that any dissemination you plan to conduct falls within the agreement between the IRB and the social work faculty teaching your class.

One of the key issues in dissemination of student research projects is confidentiality. While you are unlikely to purposefully give away information about who participated in your study, it is important to note the ways in which your audience may be able to identify participants in your research study. If your study examined experiences of men in social work graduate programs, it is likely your audience would assume your participants were from your university, and since social work is a heavily female profession, they could probably identify which handful of men in your program participated in the project. Even if you were to use more general language like, “this study was conducted with MSW students at a mid-sized public university in a rural area,” your university affiliation and the characteristics of the community may make your data less confidential and more identifiable.

A similar problem exists with projects completed in collaboration with local agencies. Even if you were to present your study as conducted “at a local hospital” or something similarly vague, your peers and local audience may be able to decipher which hospital you conducted your study at. If your findings did not reflect well on the care or staff of that hospital, your study may unethically harm the community you studied. However, if these results were shared at a national conference, it may be more difficult to locate the exact hospital in which you collected your data. There are few hard-and-fast rules for balancing these issues.

Consult with your professor on the boundaries typical for student research projects at your school. They may also have specific venues at which you will disseminate your research, including student research conferences or symposia. Some schools also host university repositories which store theses. If your school requires you to write a formal thesis, you may be required or encouraged to share your work via the university repository. It’s important to note that doing so will not impact your ability to publish your work in a journal, and it will assist with presenting your findings at a conference, as interested audience members can access your full work immediately.

In spite of these constraints, we encourage you to think of ways to bring public awareness to your findings.  Without dissemination, your research project can seem like a futile and useless endeavor. Make your project count!

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