I said that I would give my opinions on the kind of research that I’d spend my money on and this post will offer a few ideas!
To begin I would like to invite you to view research through the eyes of someone who might be in emotional pain, and also dependent. (For example a child who is growing up in a family in our Focus Group experiencing some of the scenarios as I described earlier). I described such a child in a previous post. Just to recap:
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If I am a child, and I am in emotional pain, I simply want it relieved as soon as possible by any person or means that will do it. But unlike my toothache or earache which I can get a cure for quickly, the norm is that my emotional pain will linger a lot longer and eventually I begin to believe the fact that nothing can be done about it, or is being done about it, so it begins to define me.
Sometimes I may feel loved, protected, cared for and experience creativity and warmth, and my pain will be temporarily alleviated by these experiences.
But all too often in my life they will be present and then taken away, or conditional on something I cannot achieve, or beyond my reach, all of which results in relieving the emotional pain temporarily but actually compounding it in the long term.
(Now —– getting to the point………..)
If I understood fully what research meant, the last priority in respect of what I feel should be researched would be my plight, my circumstances, the teacher-pupil ratio in my school, how I got to where I am, family-wise, the effects of poor quality housing in the area I live in, how many others that there are like me, how addiction in my family affects my education, the percentage of young boys whose Dads are in prison who get into trouble themselves, or any of the above subjects, all so beloved of researchers.
No, I would far more likely choose – if I was mature enough to cognitively understand – 1): what might be working well with other children so that it would be applied in my situation to alleviate my emotional pain in the long term, and 2): that it should be available immediately.
After the suffering is alleviated, I may choose to put some work into putting in place policies, research some of the above or draft legislation to protect myself and other children!
Funders and statutory agencies now insist that programmes, projects etc. are outcome focused. If I understood what the term outcome focused meant I’d choose the alleviation-of-emotional-pain outcome.
There is a lot of pressure nowadays on voluntary agencies to ensure that all their work is evidence based. The evidence that external viewers would observe would simply be me enjoying my life; a growing, carefree, thriving, loving, safe and protected young child.
Would you agree with the above?
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So, after all that, if I, a responsible and concerned adult with loads of money to spare and/or my fingers on the purse-strings, wanted to spend my money on research that would make a difference to the suffering child, I’d spend it on the same thing – and then implement the findings without undue delay.
Also, I’d be very keen that the researcher would be alleviating the suffering while the research is going on, and be perceived by the child as someone he can have a trusting relationship with.
I think that I’d also be interested, as a secondary but important factor, in spending my money researching how the transference of any working well factors might be affected by different times, places and cultures, and previous knowledge, norms and wisdom. That is, how they might be scaled up!
This would involve; (typically), the researchers:
~ Immersing themselves in the culture of that which is to be researched.
~ Engaging in an exploration of how they feel when doing the research.
~ Examining how the process of doing it is impacting on them.
~ Ensuring that they maintain objectivity while being so immersed.
~ Staying firmly grounded in reality.
Simple enough!