Guide: What to ask a researcher when they are interested in your organization
Climate change and sustainability have become a large focus in research as we try to cope with and prevent climate change. With that, many researchers have become interested in organizations and people working on sustainability issues. By allowing researchers to study your organization you are contributing to the advancement of research and potentially bringing us closer to understanding transitions. However, researchers can eat up the precious time and energy of the organization they are studying, and so its important to make sure you and the researcher are on the same page before the research begins.
I have had the pleasure to work with many different sustainability groups, from community-based organizations to funders to politicians. Each researcher who approaches you will have different asks of your organization as well as different abilities to help you. So whether a student working on a thesis or a professor working on a project approaches you, here is a short guide on what to ask:
1. What are you researching? The researcher should be able to generally articulate what they are researching. There is a decent chance that it may change slightly over the course of the researcher’s work- sometimes researchers discover something interesting while researching and follow that line of inquiry instead. However, it should not change drastically, for example from qualitatively examining social structures to measuring carbon reduction using large machines. Thus, what the researcher tells you in the beginning should give you a general idea of what they have planned and what they are experts in.
Don’t be discouraged if what the researcher is looking into doesn’t seem relevant to your organization. Much of what researchers look into can be relevant to a theory where the connection to your organization is not immediately obvious. I’ve certainly had organizations question my topic only to find out later it was very relevant. That being said, feel free to ask researchers to explain why they think the topic they chose is related to your organization, it’s possible that the researcher misunderstands some aspect of your organization and it can be helpful to clarify in the beginning.
Please don’t ask them to change their topic. The researcher should have thought long and hard about the topic long before approaching you. Topics are often a difficult to navigate with different requirements from funding agencies, universities, and supervisors. If you are unable for whatever reason to support that topic I suggest being up front about it. It could also be that the topic the researcher is examining is deeply uncomfortable to you or your organization, such as discrimination, politics, rebound effects, etc. These are often the most interesting topics because it shines a light on the types of problems organizations don’t want to acknowledge or deal with. If you are concerned about such topics damaging your reputation, I would ask for anonymity for the individuals and the organization, a description of how the data will be dealt with, and if the researcher has an informed consent form (these topics are covered below). Please, please, do not allow the researcher to begin research only to pull out later because the topic becomes uncomfortable- this can delay graduations, ruin projects, and hurt careers. Thus, if you think you and your organization cannot follow through its best to tell the researcher in the beginning.
2. What would you need from us? It’s important to understand what type of data the researcher needs. Are they looking at documents? Do they need interviews? Do they need to attend meetings? Focus groups? This gives you an idea of what the researcher will be asking of you and your organization.
There are a number of issues you could run into when providing data. Some documents can be difficult to provide. For example, if you are an informal organization you might not have certain types of documents or other documents could fall under privacy laws or regulations. Another issue can be that members of an organization feel uncomfortable with a researcher attending meetings and it can be something you want to clarify with members and make them aware of before allowing the researcher to attend. Sometimes researchers can work around missing documents or not being able to attend meetings, but this would ideally be mentioned in the beginning so that the researcher can look for another organization to study if working around the missing data is not possible.
3. How much time to you think it will take? It’s important to understand the length of time the research will be researching your organization. Are you signing up for someone hanging around for two months interviewing people? Or you are agreeing to provide detailed documents for five years? It’s not only important so that you know the researcher has a plan (I would run from any researcher without a general idea), but also so you know how much you are agreeing to. It’s possible that research can run for longer than originally planned (this is particularly true with student’s theses) but it should still give you an idea.
Time frames are very different in academia that in most organizations. Research for a large project can take many years before it is all collected, analyzed, and written up. If there is publishing involved it can take even longer before something is produced. You may have to wait many years before seeing any of the outcomes from participating in research project. The timelines for bachlor’s and master’s students is usually much shorter and you can normally expect to see something after a year or year and a half.
4. What is your affiliation? It’s important to find out the researcher’s affiliation both to ensure they are legitimate, but also so that you know who to call if something goes wrong. If you believe that the researcher for whatever reason is acting unethically its nice to have an organization you can call to research out to their supervisor or boss.
It is especially important to know the researcher’s affiliation if the project will take place over a number of years as researchers change jobs like everyone else and you want to be able to contact someone responsible should something come up at a later stage.
5. How will you be using the data? This may be less interesting to you that some of the other questions; however, I do think it is interesting to understand the basics of what the researcher will be doing with the data. What type of analysis will they be conducting as well as what kind of outcomes (whether papers or models) they are producing. This may also help you to understand the the type of data they are collecting and the process through which they collect it.
6. How will you protect and store the data? This is an important question and the researcher should have a plan to protect your data. In general, it is good practice for the researcher to store the data so that other researchers can double check their work if need be in the future. How secure the data needs to be stored depends on a lot of things: for example if researchers are collected data on personal health or political opinions the data needs to be securely stored. Different countries have different regulations on how data has to be stored and protected. The researcher should be able to explain this to you.
I find that both master’s and bachelor’s students often are not familiar with their university’s regulations on protecting data. I would not be discouraged if the student was unable to immediately tell you how they will be protecting your data. Instead, I would encourage the student to talk to their supervisor about how their university handles data.
7. Will you be asking for informed or implied consent? This to me is an easy way to tell if the researcher is serious about protecting your information or not. If the researcher is doing any type of interviews, the researcher needs to get consent from the interviewee. This consent should, at minimum, describe to the interviewee the type of information collected, what will be done with the data, any risks to the interviewee, as well as contact information of the researcher or a responsible person. I would not allow any researcher do interviews without seeking some form of consent from the people they are interviewing.
8. What kind of agreements need to be in place? Depending on the level of engagement between your organization and the researcher, sometimes an agreement laying out your cooperation with the researcher or research organization is encouraged. This can be as simple as outlining the details of your cooperation. I have also seen organizations that want to protect their data come up with contracts outlining what the researcher can use their data for. That being said, most organizations I have worked with have been okay with a simple outlineof what I (the researcher) plan on doing via email.
8. What can you provide us with at the end of your work? Research can produce different results. Sometimes the goal is to produce an article that will go into a journal, sometimes it is a dissertation for a bachelor’s thesis. Sometimes it is to produce a large report or build a model. Many of these things are easy for the researcher to provide you copies of once they are done.
One of the most common things I’ve seen organizations ask for is a presentation on the main findings after the research is finished. This should be easy for most researchers. Presenting research is a big part of what researchers do and many would be excited about the opportunity to present their findings. Just be prepared for it to be a while before they can present their findings depending on how their timeline.
Have you had a researcher approach you about studying your organization? What was your experience?