Institutional Gatekeepers Research Articles

When a gatekeeper denies a researcher access: circumstances of gate closure in social work research

Social work research often requires the exploration of sensitive topics that concern hard-to-reach populations. In order to gain access to these groups, researchers are often forced to rely on gatekeepers during the research process. Gatekeepers become intermediaries who help the researchers to establish this access. In this article, we focus on institutional gatekeepers and the circumstances under which they deny access to research participants. And how the researchers themselves react to this situation in the context of Czech social work research. We used qualitative research, in particular semi-structured interviews with researchers. Based on the research, we identified three main practices of researchers when gatekeepers refuse access. These are conducting research despite denial, making changes to methodology and conducting covert research. The identified procedures bring with them a number of ethical questions that need to be addressed.

Corporate Governance Evaluation and Shareholder Activism: An Institutional Gatekeeping Perspective

Corporate Governance Evaluation and Shareholder Activism: An Institutional Gatekeeping Perspective

THROUGH THE LENS: PORTRAYAL OF WOMEN JOURNALISTS IN BOLLYWOOD

This research examines the portrayal of women journalists in Bollywood films, focusing on how gender stereotypes, professional barriers, and societal expectations shape their portrayal. Using Feminist Film Theory as a framework, this study analyzes five Bollywood films—Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani (2000), Lakshya (2004), Page 3 (2005), No One Killed Jessica (2011), and Noor (2017)—to assess how female journalists are characterized, the obstacles they encounter, and the extent to which these portrayals reinforce or challenge traditional views of women in journalism. Key findings reveal that while Bollywood increasingly depicts women journalists as ambitious and capable professionals, they continue to face significant challenges. Gendered expectations limit their roles, often portraying them as secondary to male counterparts or prioritizing personal relationships over career growth. Professional obstacles, including institutional gatekeeping and ethical dilemmas, further highlight the systemic issues female journalists confront. Despite some empowering narratives, Bollywood frequently reinforces stereotypical gender roles, portraying female journalists as supportive figures within male-dominated resolutions. This analysis underscores the complexities surrounding female agency and portrayal in Bollywood, revealing an ongoing tension between progressive and traditional depictions.

Leveraging the potential of third space faculty developers to foster individual and collective flourishing faculty professional identities in higher education

In the context of higher education, which is a complex environment of shifting landscapes, academic identity is perceived as being eroded, and new identities associated with hybrid roles abound. Flexible support mechanisms are needed to counter the destabilising effects of the recent erosion of tradition-bound structures. This study explores how an understanding of faculty professional identity might be used by faculty developers to inform individual and collective development initiatives and foster flourishing. Using a qualitative methodology, focus group discussions with faculty developers probe the potential utility of a measure of faculty professional identity. Utility is evaluated at three levels of practice: institutional, collective and individual. Findings demonstrate the potential for faculty developers, with their third space positioning, to play a pivotal role in guiding individuals and institutions as they navigate increasingly complex higher education contexts. Recommendations include recognising the strategic potential of faculty developers as institutional gatekeepers of sensitive data and enablers of collective flourishing. A data-informed, adaptive, person-centred approach to individual faculty development that delves into the being as well as the doing to facilitate individual flourishing is proposed.

A Right to Know? Using Access to Information as Method in Critical Criminological Research

Access to Information and Privacy (ATIP) requests are becoming an increasingly common method of qualitative inquiry, particularly for critical criminologists in Canada who face barriers in accessing Canadian prisons to conduct research. This article explores the politics of institutional gatekeeping and highlights the ongoing policing of critical criminological knowledge, necessitating the use of ATIP as a data collection method. Two case studies describe the strategies that the authors mobilized to acquire records from the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) when their applications to conduct research inside prisons were denied. The authors argue that while access to information legislation is promoted as allowing for increased accountability and transparency of the government, real transparency is a public myth. This lack of transparency is linked to the ascendancy of administrative criminology in Canada, which ultimately devalues critical research and inhibits information flows in and out of carceral spaces.

Showing Up and Opening Up: Conducting Research with and About Refugee Resettlement Organizations

ABSTRACT This article uses research conducted with and about refugee resettlement agencies in traditional and nontraditional destinations to critically assess the opportunities and constraints that social scientists encounter when conducting research on refugee incorporation experiences. Drawing on ethnographic field notes and reflections from two qualitative research projects in the U.S. Northeast and Midwest examining refugee incorporation postresettlement, we analyze how the geographic and institutional contexts in the case studies impacted research outcomes and differences in refugee participants’ showing up and opening up during data collection. We describe how the priorities of refugee resettlement agencies, along with the social locations and positionality of researchers, shaped our relationships and negotiations with institutional gatekeepers, as well as how refugee participants responded to the research. We show how conducting community-based research can introduce overlapping and conflicting reciprocal moral obligations between researchers, refugee participants, and refugee-serving organizations that ultimately shape the research process, decisions, and outcomes.

Negotiating Access to Hard-to-Reach Populations through Institutional Gatekeepers in Social Work Research

Abstract Institutional gatekeepers play an increasingly important role in social work research, and their involvement in the research process is essential for the development of a usable knowledge base. This article explores the experience of recruiting participants through institutional gatekeepers for research on hard-to-reach populations in social work. The article aims to find out how researchers negotiate access to research participants with institutional gatekeepers. A qualitative research strategy was used to accomplish this goal. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews with researchers revealed that the researchers enter into negotiations with institutional gatekeepers with some idea of the challenges and risks, but in part they enter into the unknown and are forced to make situational assessments in joint interactions. Research evolves and transforms based on how the researcher moves through the research process, what types of gatekeepers the researcher seeks at different stages of the research process and for what purpose. We identified three basic forms of negotiating access with institutional gatekeepers: logistical assistance, barter transaction and trust-based collaboration. This article looks at the different kinds of relationships that exist between researchers, gatekeepers and hard-to-reach population. It examines the power dynamics involved in the recruitment of marginalised groups through gatekeepers in social work research.

Investigating the Roles and Responsibilities of Institutional Signing Officials After Data Sharing Policy Reform for Federally Funded Research in the United States: National Survey.

New federal policies along with rapid growth in data generation, storage, and analysis tools are together driving scientific data sharing in the United States. At the same, triangulating human research data from diverse sources can also create situations where data are used for future research in ways that individuals and communities may consider objectionable. Institutional gatekeepers, namely, signing officials (SOs), are therefore at the helm of compliant management and sharing of human data for research. Of those with data governance responsibilities, SOs most often serve as signatories for investigators who deposit, access, and share research data between institutions. Although SOs play important leadership roles in compliant data sharing, we know surprisingly little about their scope of work, roles, and oversight responsibilities. The purpose of this study was to describe existing institutional policies and practices of US SOs who manage human genomic data access, as well as how these may change in the wake of new Data Management and Sharing requirements for National Institutes of Health-funded research in the United States. We administered an anonymous survey to institutional SOs recruited from biomedical research institutions across the United States. Survey items probed where data generated from extramurally funded research are deposited, how researchers outside the institution access these data, and what happens to these data after extramural funding ends. In total, 56 institutional SOs participated in the survey. We found that SOs frequently approve duplicate data deposits and impose stricter access controls when data use limitations are unclear or unspecified. In addition, 21% (n=12) of SOs knew where data from federally funded projects are deposited after project funding sunsets. As a consequence, most investigators deposit their scientific data into "a National Institutes of Health-funded repository" to meet the Data Management and Sharing requirements but also within the "institution's own repository" or a third-party repository. Our findings inform 5 policy recommendations and best practices for US SOs to improve coordination and develop comprehensive and consistent data governance policies that balance the need for scientific progress with effective human data protections.

The role and needs of family doctors in sexual medicine: contributions of a preliminary Portuguese qualitative study for a global action.

Sexual health is fundamental for overall well-being and quality of life, making it the focus of intervention in Sexual Medicine (SM). Within the National Health Services, Primary Care Physicians (PCPs) guarantee comprehensive care in a biopsychosocial action, including in sexual health. This exploratory study aimed to investigate PCPs' perceptions about their role in SM and how to improve it. A cross-sectional online qualitative design was used, and a sample of 73 Portuguese PCPs was collected. Data was analyzed employing a summative content analysis. Three categories were established regarding how PCPs perceive their role in SM: "Protagonist", "Antagonist", and "Circumstantial". Concerning improving PCP's practice,two categories were identified: "Legitimizing Sexual Health" and "Enhancing Professional Development". In relation to SM,PCPs recognize themselves as institutional gatekeepers and comprehensive caregivers, resorting to familiar tasks to practice in a conditioned framework. To improve their rolein SM, PCPs highlighted education investment,making specific suggestions for educational content, resource expedition, detailed guidelines creation, and raising provider and patient awareness beyond the biomedical scope. The results stress the need for an institutional effort to uphold PCPs' crucial role in SM to ensure adequate resource use and consistent, comprehensive sexual healthcare provision, enhancing overall patient care and placing sexual health as an essential field in primary care.

The good and the glittery: a commentary on the contemporary culture of research and publications

ABSTRACT The dominant metaphors of “publication game,” “fast-food publishing,” or “pipeline/assembly-line” bear heavily on the ways we produce and appraise knowledge. With the hope of breaking the hegemony of these metaphors, this essay offers an alternate metaphor and re-visualizes the artefacts we produce in our academic journeys. The modest intention is that the metaphor and its associated typology can become a useful tool to reflect, reimagine, and (hopefully) realign our research goals. I hope that this perspective will enable us to see through the dazzle of knowledge artefacts and peer sharply into their substance, allowing us to break the totalizing-blinding nature of face-value judgments that afflict the academy. I discuss the ways in which the proposed way of seeing and doing can become useful for graduate students and early career academics, mid – to late-career academics, and institutional gatekeepers, along with providing a specific (perhaps utopian) toolkit for breaking the existing hegemonies.

Shooting the dragon: How visual representations of Welshness in photography have developed and are changing

For decades, the natural landscape and industry have been the central tropes of visual Welshness. But the decline of industry and its prolonged traumatic effects on the landscape have rendered some of the key established visual images of Wales redundant, particularly in a contemporary context. This article traces the relationship between photography and Welsh national identities, examines the role of institutional gatekeeping in Welsh photography and highlights the innovative use of online collecting and commissioning of photographic images which is shifting the discourse around what, and who, constitutes photographic Welshness in the twenty-first century. In doing so, it contributes to the paucity of literature on the topic of photographic institutions and archives within Wales and hopes to raise awareness around the growing diversity of new Welsh photography and its contribution to more contemporary and dynamic Welsh identities. This article is the result of a doctoral thesis that represents a transdisciplinary inquiry into expressions of national identity present in photography generated in and of Wales.

How SMT Could Become More Welcoming

Abstract Continuing Stephen Lett’s (2023) argument that pedagogy was undervalued by SMT at its inception, this essay considers the signs and implications of continued marginalization of teaching. While position statements can influence the atmosphere of a society, they are peripheral to its operations, which determine who is included or excluded. SMT could help expand the pipeline for women and minoritized groups and identities by formulating and reinforcing ethical guidelines, not just at SMT events but in the music theory profession as a whole. A set of questions is provided for assessing the potential for harmful behaviors in institutional gatekeeping, from teaching to graduate admissions and programs, faculty searches, and tenure and promotion. Deeper engagement by SMT and its membership—through the formation of guidelines for searches and tenure processes, the formation of an ethics committee tasked with review and adjudication, and mentorship for job candidates and junior faculty—should help to broaden the demographics.

METHODOLOGICAL AND ETHICAL ISSUES OF RESEARCH WITH OLDER ADULTS IN PUERTO RICO DURING COVID-19

Abstract Engaging diverse groups of older adults is essential to addressing health disparities. In this presentation, we will describe how we used our research team’s networks and knowledge of the target population to engage key stakeholders in our KAP project. We will address our partnerships with clergy, NGO staff and administrators, housing authorities, colleagues at Puerto Rican universities, and older adults who serve as informal community and institutional gatekeepers. We will discuss how these partnerships facilitated our ability to identify and access study sites and participants; conduct telephone and in-person interviews; ensure data quality through training and monitoring; and, assure safety through adherence to COVID-19 protocols. Finally, we will describe key cultural and ethical issues of conducting research with older adults through community partnerships during a pandemic. The presentation has implications for developing beneficial partnerships with local community leaders and enhancing the representation of diverse groups of older adults in research.

Advancing faculty diversity in nursing education: Strategies for success.

Despite the established value of diversity, equity, and inclusion as critical components to achieving academic excellence, building diversity within nursing education remains a challenge. Institutional gatekeeping, overt racism, and implicit biases are barriers that perpetuate a low percentage of nursing faculty of color. From pre-search strategic prioritization to submission of the search committee report, a multi-prong, just, transparent, systematic, and strategic approach to hiring is needed to advance opportunities for hiring a diverse faculty. This article provides nursing administration leaders, search committee members, and faculty engaged in hiring practices with a stepwise review of specific strategies. Evidence and tools to mitigate bias, attract excellent and diverse applicant pools, conduct fair evaluations, and support ongoing reflection and improvement of hiring practices are described. An overview of types of implicit bias in hiring practices, descriptive evaluation rubrics, and self-reflection questions are included.

Does democratizing access to science imply democratizing science? A case study of non-corporate Spanish-speaking science YouTubers

In recent years, access to science content production has been democratized. New actors can make their discourses reach large audiences through popular platforms with no institutional gatekeeping. However, it remains unclear which conceptions of the science-society relationship underlie science content created by non-corporate individuals. To explore how science communication cultures of boosters and critics inform this kind of science content in Spanish, we conducted a qualitative content analysis of a sample of 50 videos from ten YouTube science channels. Our results suggest that more accessible science communication does not necessarily entail a democratized view of science but may reinforce a traditional perspective.

Hearing, Policing, and Using Gender Diversity: The Role of Institutional Gatekeepers in Researching Youth and Gender

This article comprises a critical reflection on our experiences of recruiting participants and organising focus groups through institutional gatekeepers for research about young people and changing gendered landscapes. We show how reflections on the research process can give (inadvertent) substantive insight into how gender is interpreted by gatekeepers in institutions – that is, gender as only about or for certain young people; gender as something to be contained by the institutional logics of equality and diversity; and how ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ views of gender diversity were understood through the nationalisation and racialisation of the student body. Crucially, we also trace how these institutional interpretations of gender diversity had epistemological consequences for the kinds of knowledge we were able to generate in the focus groups with young people, as meanings were re-framed and contested, and we were funnelled down particular routes. Furthermore, the article discusses how the act of research itself was leveraged by some institutions as institutional diversity capital and/or as part of classed enrichment agendas, highlighting new dimensions to both the co-option of research and the ‘doing’ of diversity work by institutions. Overall, the article provides empirical insight on gender and gender diversity in education and youth settings, and also key methodological insight into the social constitution of ‘Knowledge’ through gatekeeping, recruitment, and access.

Constructing the “Competent” Pupil: Optimizing Human Futures Through Testing?

In the last decade, the German transition system has witnessed the large‐scale introduction of so‐called “analysis of potentials” (<em>Potenzialanalysen</em>) in secondary compulsory schooling. In most German Länder, 8th graders must participate in a two‐day assessment center which combines psychometric testing with observations of their social and professional competencies in pre‐specified tasks. The programmatic aim of these assessments is to “introduce pupils early to choosing a job” (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung [BMBF], 2017, p. 2) as well as to enhance the propensity of pupils to “take responsibility for their own future” (BMBF, 2017, p. 9). In the context of the German school‐to‐work system, the introduction of these new forms of diagnostics bear witness to a new preventive political rationality that aims at reducing the entry age into upper secondary education, reduce the recourse to so‐called “transition measures” and optimizing transitions into an apprenticeship market that is characterized by structural inequalities and “mismatch” between pupils’ job aspirations and the offers in apprenticeship places. However, little is known on the role of competency testing devices for the construction of further trajectories and aspirations and their role in the reproduction of inequalities in transitions from school to work. Based on an in‐depth analysis of policy documents and competency profiles (the documents handed out to the pupils after undergoing testing), the article reconstructs the political rationale for the introduction of the so‐called <em>Potenzialanalysen</em>. Based on a Foucauldian framework, we show how pupils are constructed as “competent” subjects. We show that competency assessments are part and parcel of a political rationality that aims at the promotion of a specific (future‐oriented, optimized, self‐regulated) relation to one’s own biographical future on the side of the pupils. Our results demonstrate that competency profiles construct the process of choosing a job as an individualized project of the self and that they invisibilize structural barriers and power relations. In doing so, competency assessments potentially contribute to the reproduction of inequalities in post‐secondary education through delegating “cooling out” processes from institutional gatekeepers to the interiority of persons.

Feminist Science Interventions in Self-Tracking Technology

Contemporary self-tracking systems signal a new era of biological monitoring now entangled with the politics of ubiquitous computing. Is self-tracking technology, which is connected to major stakeholders in healthcare, essential for filling in gaps in care, or is it fueling an increasingly commercialized medical industry? This essay examines the complex biases embedded in self-tracking technologies and introduces three manifestations of feminist science that subvert the monetization of personal health information: feminist art collective subRosa, which investigates how personal genetic information is developed into marketable medical products in their web-based project, Cell Track: Mapping the Appropriation of Life Materials; media artist and biohacker Mary Maggic, who makes self-synthesized hormone therapy accessible with their Open Source Estrogen project; artist-researcher Heather Dewey-Hagborg, whose biohacking products provide a DIY science in a world marred by genetic policing. Against the lure of connectivity, feminist science looks to circumvention as a method for understanding and disrupting the gendered and raced politics embedded in self-tracking technology. Tracing alternative techno-politics in these three new media projects, this essay reveals the necessity for artistic interventions in the contemporary healthcare landscape. 
 Feminist art collective subRosa investigates how personal genetic information is developed into marketable medical products in their web-based project, Cell Track: Mapping the Appropriation of Life Materials. Drawing attention to the corporate ownership of biology, Cell Track adds new meaning to the idea of tracking. Similarly emphasizing the potential in citizen science, media artist and biohacker Mary Maggic makes self-synthesized hormone therapy accessible with their Open-Source Estrogen project. Both subRosa and Maggic are interested in bypassing institutional gatekeepers, not unlike artist-researcher Heather Dewey-Hagborg whose biohacking products suggest a DIY science in a world marred by genetic policing.
 Feminist science aims to circumvent tracking and institutional biopower against targeted populations. Against the lure of connectivity, feminist science looks to circumvention as a method for understanding and disrupting the gendered and raced politics embedded in surveillance. Working through the three bioart projects above, this essay reveals the necessity for artistic interventions in the contemporary healthcare landscape. Where commercial self-tracking products shortchange consumers by requiring them to share their health data with third-party companies, a feminist science framework and practice critically examines – and in some cases offers a departure from – the neoliberal biotechnology and medical industries.

Challenges in Implementing Restorative Justice with Older Adults: Institutional Gatekeepers and Social Barriers

Abstract Despite the consensus regarding the importance of restorative justice (RJ) as an alternative to the criminal justice system, some professionals and researchers have pointed out the challenges involved in its implementation with older adults who have been victimised. The aim of the present study was to explore the primary obstructions to implementing RJ intervention with older adults who have been victimised, as perceived by RJ facilitators, using the conceptual framework of social constructivism. An interpretive phenomenological analysis perspective was used to analyse the narratives of seven RJ facilitators, all of them highly experienced social workers. The narratives revealed three themes: the interpersonal and familial arena—the older person and his/her family as gatekeepers; the institutional arena—judicial and medical system personnel as gatekeepers; and the professional arena—RJ facilitators as gatekeepers. The findings suggest that some individuals and institutions maintain the conservative agenda of gatekeeping older adults to prevent them from encountering any danger. These findings indicate that, in keeping with the social work code of ethics, social workers need to consider older adults’ right to self-determination in RJ contexts.

The Use of Cultural Authority in Constitutional Argument

In this paper I reconcile the need for legal validity with the aspirations of popular constitutionalism, i.e. that the American people should be a source of authority as to the meaning of our Constitution. The Supreme Court has long relied on cultural practices to help it discern constitutional boundaries. However, I argue that because of the erosion of our institutional gatekeepers that the use of and citation to popular forms of constitutional authority is both harder to do but also more necessary. Intrepid scholars like Tom Donnelly have charted some of the ways that judges can marshal popular constitutional argumentation in their decision-making. This paper contributes to this project of how judges and lawyers can cite to popular authority more effectively. I introduce the concept of cultural authority and distinguish it from other forms of authority like social science. I then observe how citation to cultural authority can be used to illuminate the scope of our Constitution. My synthetic approach is informed by iconic Supreme Court cases as well as recent noteworthy cases related to rap music and graffiti art.