Research Partnerships Research Articles

Co-designing Medication Optimization Patient-Centered Outcomes Research With Older People and Caregivers as Research Partners.

Background: Additional evidence is required to address the unintended consequences of medication use in older people and the required caregiver support. To inform priorities for future research efforts, different stakeholder perspectives are needed, including those of older people, caregivers, clinicians, and researchers. Objective: To develop a co-designed medication-related research agenda. Methods: A 12-member Advisory Council, half of which were older people and caregivers, designed the research. An 11-question survey to identify priorities for medication-related patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR) topics was administered to members of the Elder Care Medicine Network (ECMN) (ie, older people, caregivers, clinicians, and researchers). Respondents were categorized into two groups with hierarchical assignment to the clinician/research group over the older adult/caregiver group. Chi-square tests compared priority areas for medication-related PCOR between the two groups. Results: There were 53 responses (48% response rate) from the ECMN, with 39.6% (n = 21) from the clinician/researcher group and 60.4% (n = 32) from the older adult/caregiver group. The priority areas from both groups included safe ways to simplify medicines (62.2%), communicating with pharmacists and prescribers about medications (58.5%), and information about safe supplements with prescription medications (52.8%). Statistically significant differences existed between the two groups in the proportions choosing the priority areas. Conclusion: Co-design of a survey to identify priority areas for PCOR demonstrated successful engagement of older people and caregivers as research partners. While older people and caregivers may have differing perspectives on the importance of specific medication-related PCOR topics, simplifying medication regimen and health care communications were germane to both groups.

Kaupapa Māori development of te reo Māori assessments and culturally responsive hearing healthcare in Te Waipounamu: findings from wānanga

ABSTRACT The development of valid and robust te reo Māori (te reo) hearing assessments in Aotearoa New Zealand (Aotearoa) is an area of research that requires further attention from a Kaupapa Māori stance. In support of te reo revitalisation, this article shares findings from two wānanga in Te Waipounamu (the South Island of Aotearoa) with research partners (hearing healthcare professionals and Māori health and education professionals). Research partners’ perspectives and experiences of barriers and facilitators to ear and hearing healthcare in Te Waipounamu, development of te reo assessments, and their application in clinical and community settings are explored. Embedded within Kaupapa Māori theory and methodology, data was analysed using reflexive thematic analysis to identify commonalities and patterns in ‘Hauora Māori Community’ and ‘Hearing Healthcare Community’. This paper presents seven whakaaro themes and first steps from provider perspectives towards the development of culturally appropriate and responsive hearing healthcare tools and services.

Decolonizing Academic Funding: An Evaluation of an Indigenous Collaborative Funding Initiative

In 2020 an innovative Indigenous community-led internal funding initiative was undertaken at a major university in Canada, followed in 2022 by a qualitative study of its inaugural round. This funding initiative is unique in that each research project was first identified by an Indigenous community/organization through a Canada-wide outreach process. The outreach process involved reaching out to over 700 Indigenous communities and organizations, via email or telephone, to ask if they would be interested in participating in a funded research project they identified as important and beneficial. The role of the university academic research partners was that of mentor rather than principal investigator for each project. Nine community-led research projects were funded and are currently underway. In this paper the authors outline the process of developing the initiative, its components, and findings from the study. Successes and challenges of the funding model are identified followed by a discussion of emergent themes. One of the key themes that emerged is that although there are aspects of this initiative that met its intended goals, it highlights a barrier in meeting one of the objectives, contributing to Indigenous research governance and self-determination.

Academic collaboration recommendation based on graph neural network and multi-attribute embedding

Academic collaboration recommendation (ACR) can help researchers find potential partners for research and thus promote academic innovation. Recent works mostly use graph learning-based methods to explore various ways of combining node information with topology, which consists of multiple steps, including network construction, node feature extraction, network representation learning and link prediction. One limitation is that they only conduct research on co-authorship networks and ignore citation relationship between publications. Besides, they tend to use attributes from a single dimension of researchers and do not take attributes of researchers from multiple dimensions into consideration at the same time. To address the above issues, we present the multi-dimensional attributes enhanced heterogeneous (MAH) network representation learning method, which constructs heterogeneous networks with both co-authorship and citation information and makes use of multi-dimensional attributes. Three research questions are addressed in this work: (RQ1) Is our proposed method effective on academic collaboration recommendation compared with existing state-of-the-art methods? (RQ2) Does incorporating citation information into co-authorship network help improve the performance of academic collaboration recommendation? (RQ3) How does fusing multi-dimensional attributes affect the performance of academic collaboration recommendation? A publicly available real-world data set is used in our experiments. The superior performance of MAH compared with baseline methods demonstrates that the proposed multi-dimensional feature-based researcher profile can enrich node information in academic network and effective researcher representations can be learned by applying graph representation learning methods on the network.

Co-designing a Children’s Cabinet: a school district–university partnership for youth well-being post-pandemic

PurposeThis paper presents a case study of a school district–university partnership to co-design a Children’s Cabinet, a cross-sector initiative bringing together institutional and community leaders to address youth well-being in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. In a vibrant, immigrant-serving community in the Northeast United States, the partnership was initiated by district leaders in Spring 2021 after pandemic disruptions led to a youth mental health crisis.Design/methodology/approachOur descriptive, qualitative case study focuses on the structure and emerging design principles of the research–practice partnership, which established a Children’s Cabinet comprised of educational, government and community leaders along with researchers. From Spring 2021 through Spring 2024, we collected and analyzed member and youth interviews, ethnographic observations and artifacts from all meetings and process interviews with key partners.FindingsWe describe the structure of the partnership, including how researchers and district leaders collaborated on meeting facilitation and how researchers conducted and shared applied research. We then discuss three design principles that guided the work, including centering relationships, sustaining focus on key goals and embedding applied research.Originality/valueAs embedded research partners, our team is uniquely situated to narrate the nature and structure of the partnership and reflect on the design of our cross-sector initiative. Increasingly, universities are partnering directly with districts on school improvement initiatives. Our work shows how engaging in RPPs to bring together school, community and research partners can facilitate local leadership and collaboration to address complex, cross-sector goals such as increasing youth well-being.

How do communities define “work precarity” and “labour exploitation”? Lessons for research from participatory research in high economic hardship communities in Chicago, Illinois/USA

Abstract Labour migration has both social and economic drivers that channel workers into jobs that are less desirable to citizens of the receiving countries. Immigrant workers find jobs through contacts from their home countries, including temporary staffing companies. These workers tend to co-locate in segregated communities and coalesce in jobs that entail hard work, low wages, and limited social benefits. As such, labour migration adds a dimension to the structural and social determinants of health (SDOH) that can broaden our understanding of health inequities, and that can point us toward policies and practices to enhance the health and wellbeing of migrant workforces. However, to generate evidence, align interventions with workers’ needs and priorities, and move evidence to action, it is crucial to engage communities. This presentation describes a community-university research partnership that co-investigates the relationship between work and health as experienced at the community level in two high-economic-hardship neighbourhoods in Chicago, Illinois/USA. The academic and practice partners co-developed and tested a conceptual model of the interrelations among migration, work and health, conducted an inventory of local employers, and executed a street-level survey of 497 workers in these two communities. The research findings helped enhance existing models of the structural/social determinants of health and of work precarity, thus informing methodological approaches to measure work precarity, labour exploitation, and their health effects. The community-based participatory research further led to several action-research projects that are ongoing. This presentation will describe the development of the community-university research partnership and its work, the subsequent enhancements made to the worker precarity and SDOH models, and preliminary findings of the partnership’s current action-research projects.

Impact of COVID-19 measures on psychosocial outcomes in Austria – a qualitative vignette study

Abstract During the COVID-19 pandemic, Austria implemented frequent and restrictive containment measures. We aimed to explore the perspectives of individuals affected by political and epidemiological decisions in Austria, particularly in Vienna and Lower Austria. A qualitative vignette-based study conducted from July to Oct 2023 utilized two hypothetical future pandemic scenarios to prompt in-depth discussions in semi-structured interviews with Austrian residents about their perspectives, either private or from the fields of healthcare, education, citizen representation, business, research, public health and politics. Interview data was analysed using a thematic analysis approach. To ensure results’ rigor and accuracy, we followed the COREQ guideline and included two citizen research partners. This project is funded by WWTF (Grant ID: LS22071). Preliminary thematic analysis from 28 interviewees (53.6% female) aged 19-77 (mean 53.0 years) shows that the negative effects of school closures was a major concern among participants. Despite diverging points of view on other topics, there was a broad consensus that school closures would have negative consequences, such as unstable educational modalities impairing young people’s individual development, decreasing psychosocial support in their peer groups, leading to long-term educational losses, not only for individuals but also for society as a whole, and having a negative impact on economic growth, social justice and innovation. The participants also described a lack of evidence for the necessity of the frequent school closures during the pandemic as had happened in Austria and suggested a different approach in a future pandemic. Further topics were the deterioration of mental health, incentives instead of mandatory measures, more transparent communication by authorities, agreement between experts and researchers, reducing uncertainties regarding pandemic management, compliance by the general public and democratic social cohesion. Key messages • Addressing the multi-faceted impact of a pandemic requires a comprehensive approach that considers mental health, social justice, communication and social cohesion alongside containment measures. • This work represents a learning from the COVID-19 pandemic. From the conclusions of this study, recommendations can be derived to be better equipped in future pandemics.

Education researchers as negotiators: Leveraging expertise across teachers and scientists to implement authentic data investigations in grade 7–12 classrooms

AbstractIncorporating authentic research skills and practices into K‐12 science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) instruction is a challenging yet crucial approach for introducing students to authentic science inquiry. While recommendations for emphasizing data literacy and quantitative reasoning in science classroom contexts are well‐established, implementation remains challenging. Over the span of 4 years (2019–2023), a multi‐institution team of teachers, education researchers, and forest scientists established a partnership with the overarching goal of integrating authentic forest research and data into middle and high school classrooms. The education researchers played a critical role in facilitating effective scientist and teacher interactions while addressing classroom implementation challenges. Importantly, the effectiveness and mutual benefits of the research partnership were greatly influenced by specific practices implemented by the education research team, and the assumption of different collaborative roles by all stakeholders involved. In this study, we examine these roles, relationships, and interactions of all stakeholders in the partnership, with “stakeholder” referring to participating teachers, education researchers, and collaborating forest scientists.

Partnering in construction re-visited: gauging progress in industry practice and prospects for advances in academic research

Despite the ubiquity of partnering and alliancing in industry discourse and academic research, questions remain about the extent of transformational change within the sector towards more collaborative working. Revisiting earlier work that highlighted issues, problems and dilemmas of partnering related to definitional ambiguities, conflicting (commercial) orientations and cultural reach and readiness, this paper highlights continuing problems of definition, formalization, translation and performance. Attention is directed towards the lack of external validation and institutionalization, as well as the need for more comparative analysis, situated understanding, awareness of organizational pluralism and recognition of relational dynamics. From this critical review, a framework is presented that embraces the variety and indeterminacy in the many definitions, pathways to collaboration, realizations in practice and evaluative recipes used. Partnering is presented instead as being constituted through complex and interacting bundles of practices that cut across levels of interaction, and which reflect competing (and contested) institutional influences, situated practices, outcomes/effects and performance evaluations. This practice-based approach is more attuned to the diversity and fluidity of the institutional contexts, organizational processes, and project/programme settings wherein partnering is situated and through which it is instantiated, and thus affords new avenues of research into its nature and effects.

Promoting Equitable Research Partnerships in Primatology

Promoting Equitable Research Partnerships in Primatology

Learning from COVID-19: strengthening Australia's research capacity through preparedness and collaboration.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has highlighted that preparedness for and responsiveness to pandemics requires public health platforms and processes which are nimble and evidence-based and a research ecosystem which is rapidly responsive to the evolving needs of society and decision-makers. The national BEAT COVID-19 research consortium was funded in 2020 by the Snow Medical Research Foundation (Snow Medical). Its Expert Advisory Committee met with the consortium post-pandemic to summarise the research undertaken and to consider lessons learned through the research response to COVID-19 in Australia. The panel observed that philanthropy offered an important 'kick-starter' funding mechanism for urgent research, which facilitated leveraging of additional funds. It further agreed that research requirements for strengthening Australia's pandemic preparedness and response include: (1) development of a national health and medical research strategy for pandemic research; (2) long-term investment in pre-established research partnerships and networks; (3) systemic procedural improvements, e.g. in ethics, governance and resource allocation; (4) responsive funding mechanisms including philanthropy; and (5) integration of research outputs into health practice and decision-making, as illustrated in Figure 1.

Dreams, Visions, and Worldmaking: Envisioning Anthropology Through Dreamscapes

What does it mean to envision or dream a world into existence? Dreams and visions are often deeply personal and private experiences, but they also open up social spaces for worldmaking. From Australian Aboriginal “Dreamtime” to the ethnographic dreams of anthropologists and their research partners, many dreams and visions are entangled with the historical and analytical trajectories of anthropology. I set out in this article to stretch further the anthropological imagination about the kinds of dreams and visions that may emerge from any dreamscape. To this end, I show that the anthropology of dreams and visions is built on more than the interpenetration of dreaming and waking life, metaphysical questions, problems of communication and interpretation, active or passive dreaming, the powerful idioms that dreams afford for collective visions, or nightmares and metaphorical dreaming. Myriad dreams and visions also unfold as what I call cosmological visions that shape anthropology and vice versa.

The The Silent Curriculum: Classical Aesthetics as a Catalyst for Emotional and Social Skills in Higher Vocational Education

This study examines the integration of classical aesthetics into the silent curriculum of higher vocational education, emphasizing its potential to significantly enhance emotional and social skills. Incorporating aesthetic principles into education emphasizes the importance of nurturing emotional intelligence, creativity, and cultural awareness in students—skills that go beyond the classroom and are essential for their growth, adaptability, and future careers. It explores theoretical foundations and practical implementations and addresses challenges such as the need for specialized educator training, overcoming institutional resistance, and securing adequate resources. Advocating for empirical research and strategic cultural partnerships, the paper proposes a transformative approach to vocational education, aligning it with contemporary societal and labor market demands, and underscores the vital role of classical aesthetics in enriching vocational training and enhancing student outcomes.

Strategizing Originality for Technology Convergence: An Engineering Management Approach

This study examines how the integration of internal expertise with external research partnerships influences the confluence of technologies. Analyzing a decade’s patents, it clarifies the efficacy of varied knowledge acquisition strategies on innovation. The research quantifies the contribution of such synergies to innovation across technological, industrial, and geographic realms. Methodologically, it employs patent analytics to dissect originality into technology scope, assignee variety, industry diversity, and country-specific innovation trends from 2010 to 2019. Findings reveal a positive link between comprehensive technological and industrial knowledge and enhanced technological convergence. Significantly, it accentuates the role of global collaboration in unifying new technologies and industries. This interdisciplinary approach and in-depth organizational learning understanding are vital for spurring innovation. The results offer pivotal insights for academia and policy formulation in technology governance, advocating for integrated knowledge strategies to drive sector-spanning technology unification. The study provides a blueprint for fostering innovation through inter-sectoral and interdisciplinary exchange.

Development of a Refugee Health Research Agenda in North America.

The lack of a cohesive, stakeholder-informed refugee health research agenda has been a barrier to promoting, funding, and conducting health research with refugee populations in North America. A cross-sectional study was conducted among individuals working in refugee health in North America (N = 93) to describe major domains within the field of refugee health research and to develop refugee health research priorities. Open-ended survey questions included: (1) What research topics specific to refugee research would you like to see in an international research agenda? (2) Please describe current and important gaps that you believe exist in refugee research and why? Overarching themes focused on the need for the development of research partnerships with refugee communities that are intentional, effective, and driven by the needs of refugee communities. The survey also identified a need for best practices in creating sustainable, community-based research partnerships (effective models and evidence-based strategies) that translate across 12 domains. The refugee health research priorities for North America described in this manuscript should continue to be modified over time as political, economic, social, and medical contexts change.

Qualitative genomic research with Indigenous peoples: a scoping review of participatory practice

IntroductionIndigenous peoples and perspectives are under-represented within genomic research. Qualitative methods can help redress this under-representation by informing the development of inclusive genomic resources aligned with Indigenous rights and interests....

Give Credit Where It’s Due: The Ethical Imperatives of Authorship Attribution in Collaborative Research

This article proposes practical steps for those new to collaborative research or those seeking to improve the nature of collaborative research partnerships. Questioning academia’s exaltation of publications and authorship as coveted assets, the authors critically analyze the often complex, contentious, and ambiguous environment of collaborative research and negotiating authorship. With respect to academic publishing and ethics of authorship, this article grapples with two critical questions: (1) What factors create ethical dilemmas in authorship in academia? (2) How can academics and researchers better navigate the complexities of collaborative research to sustain ethical authorship practices? A seven-phase process model is proposed to guide the collaborative research process to mitigate ambiguities that reside in the black box. The seven phases encompass problem settings and pre-negotiations, direction setting: action planning, social capital, re-negotiations, equity and inclusivity, implementation- the submission-revision cycle, and reflexivity. This theoretical analysis aims to offer a useful resource to promote enhanced collaborative practices, and the authors take an explicit advocacy and visionary perspective to promote transparency, accountability, and reciprocal trust, to shatter overarching issues such as oppressive, deceitful, and exploitative norms in academic authorship practices.

Innovating Against Odds: A Medical Student's Research Journey in a Resource-Constrained Environment

"You need not know the R in Research to embark on the journey; a strong motivation is enough to set things in motion and let the journey unfold naturally." In this article, I share my journey as a medical student starting research in a Resource-Constrained Environment. I talk about the learning curve, milestones, setbacks, and presenting my research work. I've created a simple guide for fellow students in similar situations to do impactful research. Beyond studies, the shared journey with my research partner formed a lasting bond, showing how teamwork fosters understanding and innovation. I also discuss institutional barriers, especially the toxic research culture not talked about much. I stress the importance of raising awareness about these challenges for medical students and the need for a supportive and ethical research environment. It's crucial to create a space where aspiring researchers can thrive without unethical practices, emphasizing the value of knowledge pursuit over personal ambitions.

Research partnerships as transformational learning experiences

A common partnership between faculty and students in post-secondary education is that of researcher as a primary investigator (PI) and research assistant (RA). In this reflective essay, we examine an unconventional research partnership between Allison, a PI, and Bailey, an RA. Our experiences as PI and RA prompted us to reflect upon our learning partnership. We asked: In what ways might the role of RA be transformative (Mezirow, 1994) in teacher education for both researcher and student when it is approached through partnership? This partnership is unique because of its relational approach, where the PI and the RA collaborated in making decisions about the direction of the RA work. The RA’s perspective offered a different viewpoint on the research focus through which the researcher aimed to gain insights. This approach altered the dynamics of the research partnership, which evolved along the lines of both partners acting as equal contributors and co-learners through the research process. In this paper, we reflect on our consequential learning. Specifically, we focus on the learning that occurred when Bailey self-directed RA work on the topics of radical imagination, restorative justice, and appreciative inquiry, as well as the insights Allison gained through Bailey’s work. We use “I” in our respective sections and “we” and “our” in our collective writing, and we also refer to ourselves in the third person for clarity when needed.

Student Led Observations for Course Improvement (SLOCI)

As universities strive to enhance course delivery and the student experience, typical end-of-semester course evaluations have been demonstrated to provide insufficient and potentially biased detail for course improvement and innovation. The Student Led Observations for Course Improvement (SLOCI) team at The University of Queensland aims to provide high-quality student experience data through a student-led approach. The team comprises current undergraduate university students who have a basic understanding of pedagogical strategies and methods of evaluation, bridging the gap between students and academics. SLOCI utilises a course partnership model to work with academics to identify key research questions that can direct and inform a process of real-time feedback. Since 2018, SLOCI has conducted 48 single-semester course partnerships and nine research partnerships focussed on other aspects of the student experience. The student experience data generated from these collaborations has underpinned improvements resulting in higher student engagement and better learning outcomes.