At the Disaster Research Center when training graduate students in how to do fieldwork, Dr Jim Kendra emphasizes that it’s important not just to adhere to ethical interview practices but to appear to: people need to be able to trust that the academics who want to interview them about a recent trauma won’t exploit them. So appearances and perception matter to being able to perform effective research.
This came up last week because Karishma, Mark, and I were talking about actually writing down our research quality standards so people know what to expect from us. Everyone involved in APR is intellectually curious and has a drive to uncover truths that can be useful and help people, but as Research Integration Lead, Associate Director, and Quality Assurance Manager the three of us get to figure out the most concrete and concise way to frame that.
The conversations we’ve had so far reminded me of graduate school and the important lessons about the need not just to commit to the highest standards but to communicate that to the people you might want to talk to. Our conversations have also involved breaking down exactly what we mean by ‘quality’ – what terms and benchmarks best represent our values? Some of that ends up breaking down terms that we’re comfortable with into ones that have more basic and measurable commitments, like the idea of credibility. Yes, we want to be trustworthy and reliable! But that is then really only about appearances. And while appearances matter, substance matters more. So we’re working on figuring out the most basic, measurable building blocks of the quality that we’re committed to. It’s an ongoing conversation involving the multidisciplinary expertise, depth of thought, and consideration of impact that we’re planning to bring to all our projects.
Follow us on Bluesky or watch this space, because we’re going to make our quality standards public as soon as we’ve figured out the best way to talk about what we’re committed to as a group.