Graduate Student Community of Practice Reflection

When I decided to be a part of this community of practice as a first-year graduate student, I didn’t know what to expect as I have heard of community-engaged research but didn’t really know what it meant. I will value being a part of this community, especially during my first year, as most of the classes I took focused on the quantitative side of research but there is much more to research than numbers. Humans don’t exist in a bubble so being able to apply quantitative research results can be difficult as there are many other factors to consider in life and quantitative research may not be as accessible to community members. In these meetings, I was able to express my interest not only in qualitative research and the type of information it can provide us but I also learned how research can be done with and for community members. Qualitative and mixed-methods research allows us to get more of an insight into how someone may be feeling or their thinking process, something a change in scores on tests may not be able to tell us. We also took the time to talk about how to approach this type of work knowing there are so many components we have to consider. An example of this is how we can wear so many hats being a part of this research and how to balance them. We can wear the “researcher” hat as well as the “student” hat but it's also important for us to integrate ourselves into the community the best we can as one of our ultimate goals may be doing this research so community members can implement it. Juggling so many hats can be difficult so it's important to recognize what hat you may be wearing in certain situations and which one you may want to wear. It’s also important to take care of yourself through this whole process even if that’s communicating to your community partner that you may need to take a couple of days to rest.

Knowing how we can use our power to advocate for our community members, for example, is also important when they may not be in the room with us. All in all, this type of research is something I hope to be a part of and implement in my future practice as I believe this is the type of research that allows us more of an insight into someone’s life. Although we may be the expert in research, the community is the expert in what they are experiencing so being able to work collaboratively on a project where it is written for and used by the community members is an important type of research.