Critical Considerations for Conducting Equitable Research with Socially Disadvantaged Groups

Scientific inquiry has traditionally focused on observing, understanding, and describing phenomena with significantly less attention paid to how researchers' beliefs, biases, and assumptions influence research methods and participant interactions. Although scientific inquiry is socially and geographically situated, and constrained by structure and ideology, the ways white supremacy, western perspectives, and notions of power and control manifest in studies remains largely uninterrogated. The exclusion of community members in traditional research efforts means that captured experiences risk being misinterpreted and misrepresented. And lack of understanding and responsiveness to the realities of communities may lead to negative or harmful research-related interactions. This may be particularly problematic when investigating sensitive topics with socially disadvantaged and vulnerable groups that pose the potential for substantial threats, including emotional harm, reactivating distress, and intensifying stigma. This roundtable will consider how to design and implement safe and rigorous studies that center protection from harm for marginalized groups, including individuals in the LGBTQ community, children and adults impacted by commercial sexual exploitation (also known as sex trafficking), documented and undocumented Latine immigrants, and people with mental health challenges. We will offer critical considerations and helpful practices, such as integrating community members in research processes, for conducting research with highly vulnerable and disempowered groups who historically lacked agency and bodily autonomy. Community-engaged research aims to conduct research with communities, and include collaborative processes where community members and key stakeholders' perspectives are centered and valued, and their agency over research decisions is promoted. Community engagement can help assuage ethical concerns, support emotional and physical safety of participants, center participant perspectives and voices, and ensure that research efforts and collaborations are sustainable. Intentionally working to realign power and control over research decisions and centering the perspectives of community partners can also increase the practicality of research aims and relevance of findings. The roundtable will discuss the role of positionality and reflexivity in social work research. Actively examining the intersectionality of researchers' social and cultural identities, and subsequent worldviews and personal values, throughout the research process may reduce research bias, improve trustworthiness of findings, and support the advancement of social work ethics and values. This roundtable discussion may encourage researchers to be more mindful of the methods and language used to gather information. Being attentive to language that may be disconnected from communities, such as terms typically not used in the community or academic jargon, may help improve community partnerships and support meeting community partners where they are. Integrating strategies shared in this roundtable may support research that upholds the dignity and self-worth of participants. Strategies to bolster the physical safety and emotional wellbeing of researchers will also be discussed. These strategies can include precautions to protect the physical self in potentially dangerous environments, and caring for the emotional self by creating space to process intense experiences and potential trauma responses. Space will be provided for ongoing discussion on how to design and implement studies with socially disadvantaged and marginalized groups that is equitable, safe, and just.