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Heather Colquhoun
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Ryan DeForge
the final installment of KTTC’s first VSS on ‘the nature of evidence’ _ 3/3
Hi, what’s up?
What’cha doing over here at the KTTC blog, i wonder?
Thanks for making the time.(-:
In any case, this is a quick post re: today’s virtual seminar meeting — it was the third consecutive meeting in three weeks and marked the conclusion of our series on ‘the nature of evidence’.
Today, n equaled 5, two of whom (including me) have been a part of all three seminars, and for the other 3 today was their second time attending.
There are better summaries of what we read and said in the VSS google-doc, so i won’t say much here other than this: if you do surf over to check it out, start by zooming out (way out) and noting the four major sections of the workbook — it’s easy, it’s color-coded.
The yellow cells tell you what you’re reading,
the pink cells on the right are an evaluation of today and this first VSS,
the yellowy-orange cells at the bottom are my rendering of what were some of the conversation threads expressed today … (with apologies now for any inaccuracies — may today’s participants please feel free to edit or add; and for that matter, may any new visitor feel free to grab a bunch of empty cells, merge them, and leave your own Comment).
… and the green and blue cells comprise the ‘commentary’ re: today’s two readings.
[Cornelissen et al. (2011), Knowledge translation in the discourse of professional practice; and Ellingson (2006), Embodied knowledge: writing researchers’ bodies into qualitative health research. ]
It may not be the easiest medium to navigate, and ideas are afoot to collate this entire vss/google-doc into a more ‘readerly’ fashion, but appropriately enough, before the truth of what transpired can be constructed as such for peer review, the heart of the VSS is about being peer created.
I’m but one scribe.
We’re all participants.
As it relates to some members’ thoughts
on the nature of evidence,
see what’s up, here:For now, ciao.
Ryan -
Ryan DeForge
job postings _ Ontario
Here’s a link to some recently posted KT/E jobs, fyi.
Ryan -
Dwayne Van Eerd
Hello KTTC,
As many of you know a group of us recently applied for a CIHR planning grant to facilitate a face to face meeting of the KTTC.
GOOD NEWS: We were successful, thanks to a creative and fun collaborative effort!!
The basis of the grant focuses on the development of research ideas from our last meeting and exploring emerging KT priorities. The reviewer comments were positive and constructive.
More details will follow about the meeting and moving the research projects forward as we consider putting our plans into action.
Many thanks to those involved in getting the application together for submission.
Regards,
Dwayne-
Ryan DeForge
Woo-hoo!
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Heather Colquhoun
This is so fantastic. Congratulations to the team with special mention to Dwayne for taking the lead. I was already thinking about what the agenda should look like.
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Elaine Hyshka
That is really great news. Congratulations to the grant-writing team!
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Ryan DeForge
KTTC’s first virutal seminar series _ on ‘the nature of evidence’, part 2 of 3.
Hi again KTTC,
A quick post re: today’s virtual seminar meeting:
The readings we looked at —
Straus, S. & Haynes, B. (2009). Managing evidence-based knowledge: the need for reliable, relevant and readable resources. CMAJ, 180 (9), 942-945
and
Bluhm, R. (2005). From hierarchy to network – a richer view of evidence for evidence-based medicine. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 48 (4), 535-547.
– focused on what makes for good/bad ‘research based’ evidence, which is to say that clinical experience, patient preferences, nor local knowledge/context were not addressed. We spent some time considering the Straus & Haynes article and noted that it seems to clearly target ‘evidence-based’ practitioners — (but) do they draw on multiple sources of knowledge?!?
We talked too about how the writing/availability of systematic reviews does little to mitigate time barriers — in fact, there are now so many SRs that keeping up with just them is a chore (!) MOREOVER, if one comes to rely on SRs, we agreed they’re likely to face the challenge of having to recontextualize thoroughly decontextualized findings. This led us to share/consider a story about a SR (for a particular provider group in a particular setting / geo-region) that included 20 studies, but only 2 were Cdn. That group wanted to privilege the two local studies … which led us to again reconsider what ‘relevant evidence’ means — in the paper, relevance is deemed to mean evidence that’s tailored to a specific specialty or discipline; our conversation prompted to add (specify) geographic relevance AND notions of ‘timeliness’ to the mix.
What struck us about the Bluhm article is that it’s a critique of ‘the hierarchy’ from WITHIN a post-positivist paradigm, which I for one take as comforting and refreshing, for as someone who’s located in a critical-interpretivist camp, i’d usually seen critiques of the hierarchy come from outside of the mainstream paradigm. Bluhm makes the case that the methodologies that are at play on the research bench are as fundamental to epidemiology as are the methodologies used to determine incidence and prevalence rates.
Much like last week, we were left with a feeling that the challenge lies in synthesizing different sources of knowledge. To this end, Bluhm’s metaphor of a network of evidence — characterized by interconnected nodes of knowledge rather than discrete and disconnected levels of a hierarchy — it’s an immensely productive metaphor.
FYI, there were today 4 participants in the VSS (plus a couple sets of pre-mtg regrets). We spent 5 extra minutes at the end of the seminar evaluating our time together (employing that old standby of positing ‘stars’, ie, that which we liked about the seminar, and ‘wishes’ for change/improvement. Even with additional prompting to elicit more ‘wishes’, the stars by far out-numbered the wishes.
To take a peek at both the stars and the wishes, and/or to skim through some of the points made during the seminar, click on the link below to access the (open access) google-doc that houses the KTTC VSSs.
And if you’re able to join us next week for the third and final seminar in this inaugural ‘virtual seminar series’, please do. FYI/recall, the readings are:
Cornelissen et al. (2011). Knowledge translation in the discourse of professional practice. International Journal of Evidence Based Healthcare, 9, 184-188
and
Ellingson, L. (2006). Embodied knowledge: writing researchers’ bodies into qualitative health research. Qualitative Health Research, 16 (2), 298-310.
If you have any questions or would like to find out more about how/when you might participate, feel free to contact me either by Replying to this thread or by emailing me at ryan.t.deforge [@] gmail.com.
Cheers,
Ryan -
Elaine Hyshka
Journal Club Entry on Transdisciplinary Public Health Research
Hi everyone!
I see our KTTC community has grown quite a bit since my last face-to-face meeting. It’s great to see an influx of new posts on the blog! It’s also great to see that the first VSS is up and running (unfortunately and somewhat ironically, I have my ‘Engaged Scholarship’ class Thursdays and have been unable to participate).
Anyways, I’m posting because this coming Thursday it’s my turn to present at our faculty’s PhD Journal Club (to those I haven’t met, I’m at the University of Alberta’s School of Public Health). Presenting at the journal club entails selecting an article of relevance to your work, and submitting a summary of it and some corresponding discussion questions to the group. I’ve selected an article on the pitfalls of transdisciplinary [public health] research. I think this article will speak to a lot of KTTCers who have attempted research and practice in a transdisciplinary context. So I thought I would post the link to the article and my summary here. If you have thoughts on the discussion questions, that’s great! Otherwise consider this a quasi-annotated bibliographic entry for the blog. I hope everyone is having a productive winter term!
Regards,
Elaine
Journal Club Entry:
Canning, C.G., Hird, M., & Smith, G. (2010). The pitfalls of the “add-and-stir” approach to transdisciplinary public health research. Critical Public Health, 20(2), 145-155. http://www.tandfonline.com.login.ezproxy.library.ualberta.ca/doi/abs/10.1080/09581590903342077
In the above article, Canning, Hird, & Smith (2010) critique current approaches to transdisciplinary public health research (TPHR) arguing that they tend to favour methodological but not epistemological integration. They refer to this as the ‘add and stir’ approach whereby natural scientists and social scientists partner to study complex public health problems without first uncovering and integrating each other’s epistemological stances. Resultantly, social scientists’ participation tends to be restricted to a social-constructivist approach focused on social, economic, ethical, and political issues, while natural scientists continue to produce positivistic studies of material things. The authors argue that this arrangement either reduces complex health problems to basic parts or conceptualizes the issue too broadly, impeding the discovery of cause-and-effect relationships. Moreover, the ‘add-and-stir’ approach negates the potential of TPHR to “define innovate ways of understanding complex social and biological issues.” (p.150). The authors suggest a better approach for studying complex public health issues would be to embrace an epistemology such as realism, which views “the complex interplay between the social and material as never having been epistemologically distinct” (p. 148). They conclude with recommendation for improving TPHR including: 1) critically analyzing the epistemological component of all team research, 2) reorienting research training around TPHR, and 3) focusing more on knowledge translation.
Discussion points and questions
The authors assert that TPHR “has become a major imperative across all sectors of society and knowledge domains” and that the CIHR among other funders mandate TPHR in the relevant funding calls.
o If so, why are so many ‘add-and-stir’ research projects funded?
o Do funding agencies appreciate the distinctions between multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, and transdisciplinarty enough to appreciate epistemologically conscious research designs?
Public health researchers are increasingly faced with a dual imperative of increasing their knowledge translation activities and engaging with other researchers from outside their subdiscipline to produce TPHR.
o Does the push for KT complement or undermine efforts towards TPHR? In what ways?
Canning, Hird and Smith assert that making epistemological assumptions explicit and adopting an integrative and flexible epistemology is key to producing high- quality TPHR.
o How comfortable are you with examining your own epistemological assumptions and exploring new ways of knowing?
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Ryan DeForge
Brilliant post Elaine — thanks for making the time to share this article/summary and these points of discussion. I’m interested in taking a shot at responding to some of the issues you / the article raise:
{1. You mentioned that} The authors assert that TPHR “has become a major imperative across all sectors of society and knowledge domains” and that the CIHR among other funders mandate TPHR in the relevant funding calls. If so, why are so many ‘add-and-stir’ research projects funded?
o The first thing i think of is the notion of hegemony (see Gramsci, 1971, and/or the wiki-def’n at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegemony ) —- and insofar that post-positivism is the hegemonic paradigm in science, then we might well be able to account for so many ‘add and stir’ projects by way of pointing to what, at times, appears to be a positivist appropriation of POST-post-positivist methodologies. In other words, since the received way of doing and thinking about science is post-positivist, the integration of alternative methodologies occurs without paying attention to the epistemological nuances of those alternative methodologies. Hence you see mixed methods projects (or programs) that oftentimes mis-treat or ignore the philosophical assumptions that undergird the qualitative component. This is troubling insofar that as a consequence, the validity of the qualitative work is / might be compromised. Rather than the recipe becoming more rich and delicious with a newly added ingredient, the new ingredient becomes watered down.
2. Do funding agencies appreciate the distinctions between multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, and transdisciplinarty enough to appreciate epistemologically conscious research designs?
o I don’t know. If the hegemonic tendencies of post-positivist science reach up at all into the realm of funding, then i’d suppose (and be concerned) that the answer is No — partly because of (or reproduced by) the answer to your final question — are you/we comfortable with examining our own epistemological positions and with being open to new ways of knowing — if the answers to these questions are No, then how might science/funders ever come to respect (and perhaps favor) projects that espouse/practice epistemological pluralism?
3. Public health researchers are increasingly faced with a dual imperative of increasing their knowledge translation activities and engaging with other researchers from outside their subdiscipline to produce TPHR. Does the push for KT complement or undermine efforts towards TPHR? In what ways?
o I’d like to think that the ‘cutting edge KT’ invites/fosters/integrates other, alternative perspectives. If though KT practices remain orthodox, that is limited to ‘research-based evidence’ only — at the expense of clinical, patient, and local/contextual knowledge, then it would seem that any disciplines that embrace non-orthodox ways of knowing are likely to be marginalized. So, to answer the question, i might say, If/when KT practices embrace epistemological pluralism, then TPHR can be supported and enhanced.
4. Canning, Hird and Smith assert that making epistemological assumptions explicit and adopting an integrative and flexible epistemology is key to producing high- quality TPHR. How comfortable are you with examining your own epistemological assumptions and exploring new ways of knowing?
o My own doctoral training hasn’t steeped me in post-positivism; rather, in an effort to appreciate and apply the tenets of rigor in qualitative methodologies, I’ve learned that a central criterion for rigor IS to ‘locate oneself’ epistemologically … by asking/answering questions of how researchers’ subjectivities are present, how they are recognized/articulated, and by being transparent about how that affects one’s analysis and resultant knowledge claims. I’ve found though that this is a seemingly never-ending quest, and much like an insatiable sponge, one call easily fall into the (sometimes) paralyzing trappings of (not) knowing how we know. While the 4+ years of doctoral training can/does provide the opportunity for that growth and introspection, it seems that such considerations are inevitably rendered (by hegemonic forces) as moot — “let’s just be pragmatic about it” they say, and focus on solutions. Fair enough, but not at the expense of embracing other ways of knowing. SO, one either continues to run the risk of reigniting some paradigm war, OR one recedes to a camp of likeness where his/her alternative ways of knowing and alternative methodologies are accepted (albeit in some seemingly marginalized sense), OR those marginalized knowers must tactfully and patiently and persistently (re)create the spaces where hegemonic practices can be fractured so as to make room for ‘a view from below’. Being comfortable in/doing the latter is a tall order, one that requires a willingness to be vulnerable; thankfully, i think/sense, there are more of us ‘critical realists’ out there than we know, even if we might not all share a passion for appreciating how/when/why we’re ‘located’ as we are.
Thanks again Elaine. I’d be curious to know how your U of A seminar unfolds.
Cheers,
Ryan -
Elaine Hyshka
Ryan,
Thanks for taking the time to formulate such a thoughtful reply! It’s great to be able to indulge my sociological side in this forum, and the KTTC is lucky to have someone like you who has clearly thought a lot about epistemology and knowledge production. I’ve included some responses to your comments below:
1) Excellent point! I think you eloquently captured the major problems associated with adopting methodologies without consideration of their epistemologic roots, and hegemony is a interesting lens for making sense of why this is a perennial problem for many public health research projects with the even best transdisciplinary intentions.
2) During the seminar we talked a lot about how both funding agencies, the peer review system, and FECs tend to disincentivize quality TPHR. For example, funders often require applicants to demonstrate the multidisciplinary nature of the team, but rarely ask for details on how the team will integrate methodologically and epistemologically, and how this integration will be reflected in the findings. The overall attitude of the group was that TPHR was a noble pursuit but mostly unrealistic in the current academic system.
3) I agree with you that KT should ideally move towards epistemological pluralism, and certainly hope to push the boundaries in my own research. Lately though, I’ve been more inclined to think about and identify with the ‘engaged scholarship’ paradigm because it emphasizes both academic-knowledge user collaboration and cross-disciplinary collaboration (in research AND teaching) for addressing complex social problems (such as problematic substance use). I think the notion of epistemological pluralism is more at home in ES than KT, at least currently.
4) “It seems that such considerations are inevitably rendered (by hegemonic forces) as moot — “let’s just be pragmatic about it” they say, and focus on solutions. Fair enough, but not at the expense of embracing other ways of knowing. SO, one either continues to run the risk of reigniting some paradigm war, OR one recedes to a camp of likeness where his/her alternative ways of knowing and alternative methodologies are accepted (albeit in some seemingly marginalized sense), OR those marginalized knowers must tactfully and patiently and persistently (re)create the spaces where hegemonic practices can be fractured so as to make room for ‘a view from below’.”
This is great insight Ryan. Prior to reading this article, I hadn’t thought very critically about why interdisciplinary projects tend to adhere to conventional ways of collaborating and resultantly produce fairly standard discipline-specific research products. Reading the above comment, I really identify with your experience. You mention critical realism, and I’m curious if you’ve found any other theories offering guidance on epistemological integration? Unfortunately, I found Canning et al. (2010) short on guidance in this area, with two exceptions. The authors suggested incorporating a social theorist onto the research team who’s role would be to interrogate and document the team’s epistemologic stand point (a nice job prospect for my former classmates in sociology but not always practical), they also made a vague reference to Actor Network Theory, which I have seen (promisingly) applied in the realm of illicit drug research, but have not had the opportunity to investigate it further.
Thanks again for taking the time to respond! I look forward to future discussions on this topic.
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Ryan DeForge
re: ‘guidance on epistemological integration’ …
(1) I really enjoyed reading the book, Engaging Crystallization in Qualitative Research by L. Ellingson. It’s a little less about integrating per se, and more about re-presenting one’s findings across a/the continuum of epistemological positions … either within a single work, or spanning across a number of products/papers.
Here’s a link: http://books.google.ca/books/about/Engaging_Crystallization_in_Qualitative.html?id=HrO8BIycdfIC
(2) A colleague of mine is presenting (here at Western) later this week on using Actor Network Theory to understand the production and application(s) of knowledge within the context of genetic research. I like how ANT ‘gives agency’ to non-human mechanisms, and agree that such a theoretical orientation can help illuminate a/the context.
(3) A third way to engage notions of pluralism is through the theoretical notion of ‘bricolage’ … see Chapters 1 & 9 of the SAGE Handbook on Qual Research (4th ed), and/or do a google search for ‘Kincheloe AND bricoleur’. A colleague and I have an article in press re: ‘physiotherapy as bricolage’ in which we re-dress the ways in which ‘expertise’ is conceptualized in PT and in doing so, espouse a kind of epistemological pluralism, that is, across PTs’ practices, paradigms, and professional identities. In any case, donning a bricoleur’s hat is to surround and avail yourself to myriad perceptions, which, come full circle, is akin i think to ‘epistemological integration’.
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Heather Colquhoun
Ryan and Elaine,
I don’t have any content to add to your discussion but I wanted to say how much I enjoyed reading your dialogue. It made me reflect on concepts that I rarely reflect on and made me wonder how I might become less trapped in singular (the opposite of pluralism?) notions/concepts/ways of thinking.
Thank you
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Ryan DeForge
KTTC’s first virutal seminar _ on ‘the nature of evidence’, part 1 of 3.
FINALLY! We held our first Virtual Seminar Series today and (i can’t help but feel) it was a smashing success! Participants included one post-doc and 3 doctoral candidates with KT-focused interests, and one community practitioner (a clinical nurse specialist from Oregon) with a burgeoning interest in KT. There were no “ground rules” to shape our dynamics, but instead just a couple of facilitative mechanisms: (i) the google-doc that houses some of the previously prepared commentary that served as a point of departure for our seminar, and (ii) an attempt to establish an atmosphere in which we could “pit & pursue” each others’ ideas and assumptions.
If you’re interested, feel free to take a gander at the google-doc at this link:
You’ll find (in row 2 of the Jan 19 2012 worksheet) what is essentially an annotated bibliography for the two articles we read/discussed, plus a brief summary of the topics of discussion that emerged (in row 3). Perhaps, over time, this google-doc will evolve into something of a living document as we/you/anyone adds to or builds upon some of the ideas shared today. (Feel free to leave a post-seminar Comment somewhere on the google-doc and/or by replying to this thread
FYI, the two readings for today were:
Raphael, D. (2000). The question of evidence in health promotion. Health Promotion International, 15 (4), 355-368
and
Rycroft-Malone et al. (2004). What counts as evidence in evidence-based practice? Journal of Advanced Nursing, 47 (1), 81-90.
Some of the topics we landed on during the seminar include: additions to / variations of the principles of evidence-based practice (a la Sackett); the merits and (im)possibilities of methodological and theoretical (and even epistemological) pluralism; notions of ‘KT as bricolage’ (see Levis-Stauss 1966, Kincheloe 2001, Denzin & Lincoln 2005, but you’ll not find anything, i don’t think, about bricolage & KT per se); the notion of ‘crystallization’ (see Richardson1997; Ellingson 2009); we also spoke of the growing acceptance and apparent appropriateness of mixed methods research in KT (fitting indeed with notions of science from the viewpoints of epistemological pluralism);
… and in an unexpected and most refreshing sense, storied for us were some of the experiences of a KTTC member from the US, a clinical nurse specialist working with Veterans — it’s exciting to bear witness to the growth and inclusiveness of & with/in the KTTC; moreover, these real-world experiences helped (re)ground our discussion in the ‘swampy lowlands’ (Schon, 1996) of clinical practice — ivory-tower-speak seems to tend toward the abstract at times, don’t you think?
That’s not to apologize though for this seminar topic: the ‘nature of evidence’ is akin to considerations of the nature of knowledge, and so it seems venturing into and getting a feel for some philosophical conventions and apparatuses is necessary, productive, and rewarding. Doubly so, i’d say, when our shared thoughts remain meaningful to all knowledge users’n'producers.
And/so/also FYI, the two readings for NEXT week (ie, Jan 26, 12 noon eastern) are:
Straus, S. & Haynes, B. (2009). Managing evidence-based knowledge: the need for reliable, relevant and readable resources. CMAJ, 180 (9), 942-945
and
Bluhm, R. (2005). From hierarchy to network – a richer view of evidence for evidence-based medicine. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 48 (4), 535-547.
Thanks for your consideration and time — we look forward to more rich participation and collaborative learning next week!
Take care all,
Ryan-
Vivian Chan
Great to hear the 1st session went well!
With respect to the nature of evidence, perhaps this article from the New Yorker would also offer another perspective. It talks about the decline effect and the scientific method…
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/12/13/101213fa_fact_lehrer?printable=truethe article ended with…
“Such anomalies demonstrate the slipperiness of empiricism. Although many scientific ideas generate conflicting results and suffer from falling effect sizes, they continue to get cited in the textbooks and drive standard medical practice. Why? Because these ideas seem true. Because they make sense. Because we can’t bear to let them go. And this is why the decline effect is so troubling. Not because it reveals the human fallibility of science, in which data are tweaked and beliefs shape perceptions. (Such shortcomings aren’t surprising, at least for scientists.) And not because it reveals that many of our most exciting theories are fleeting fads and will soon be rejected. (That idea has been around since Thomas Kuhn.) The decline effect is troubling because it reminds us how difficult it is to prove anything. We like to pretend that our experiments define the truth for us. But that’s often not the case. Just because an idea is true doesn’t mean it can be proved. And just because an idea can be proved doesn’t mean it’s true. When the experiments are done, we still have to choose what to believe.” -
Robin Urquhart
Hi All,
Viv, I just finished reading the New Yorker article you suggested above, and it was a terrific read. Thanks!
I also recommend to anyone pondering the notion of evidence and “truth”.
Cheers,
Robin -
Heather Colquhoun
Agreed, great read. I guess that throws replication out the window.
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Vivian Chan
interesting talk
I was emailed this link of a talk from a friend about “massive-scale collaboration” and decided to take the time to watch it because of the subject line…
Really interesting projects related to cloud sourcing, something I know very little about. One of the project the speaker presented is CAPTCHA (the thing you have to type in when you are verifying yourself as a human user on websites) and using that to digitize books. The projects made me wonder, can KT research (or any other research disciplines) benefit from the idea of working together/enabling others? Are there applications for my work?
I am still pondering the last Q.
The video is about 16mins long. It’s worth it.
http://www.ted.com/talks/luis_von_ahn_massive_scale_online_collaboration.html -
Ryan DeForge
Steering Committee meeting minutes _ Jan 13 2012
Fyi, the minutes from today’s SC meeting are available for viewing at the link below.
Happy Friday!
Ryan*
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Ryan DeForge
Q: What makes for a good KT CV?
What I’d like to know is, What makes for a good “KT CV”?
I’ve heard before that a CV that’s ‘all over the place’, so to speak, looks bad. So for instance, a more or less conventional presentation might list your publications or presentations chronologically, but if your work is of that sort that you contribute KT support to a range of disciplines/body parts/sectors, your CV might look scattered.
Has anyone a story to share about the construction of &/or reception to their “KT CV”?
Cheers,
Ryan
Evelyn Cornelissen 6:32 pm on February 6, 2012 Permalink
Thanks Heather. That’s great…quite a jump from 77 not so long ago.
NEW (and not so new!) MEMBERS… please post something about yourself and/or your KT interests. We’d love to get to know you better. EC