University faculty members are required to teach, to sit on committees, to advise students, and to be research mentors for students, in addition to their research responsibilities. All these pressures leave time for little more than data collecting, analysis, publication, and then moving on to the next publishable project. Establishing New Research Ethics To create a relationship that helps researchers gain access to information and aids the communities they study, Spencer, Ortega, Astor and others at the UM are asking community members to become co-collaborators. Collaboration provides parents, teachers, and community leaders with timely results of research data, suggestions based on that information, as well as help in the community from university students involved in the research projects. Beyond providing research data, this collaboration, researchers believe, will benefit their research in many other ways.
Collaboration is one way to quickly put research results into practice.
In his research in the Head Start program, Spencer plans to use findings from pilot studies to help refine current Head Start screening measures and to shape inservice mental health training for Head Start teachers. Poverty Center faculty associate John Wallace collaborates with Detroit community groups to conduct action-research that addresses issues identified by community members themselves. And much of the understanding and the ability to mobilize people and those kinds of things are not really possible to do sitting in an office at the University. Community-university collaboration also allows researchers to better understand their research environment, says Astor. This ensures data won't be interpreted incorrectly based on false assumptions.