Читать книгу Researching in the Age of COVID-19 Vol 1 - Группа авторов - Страница 7
ОглавлениеSu-ming Khoo and Helen Kara
As the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world in early 2020, researchers had to react. Discussions of research methods and planning for ongoing and near-future research swiftly turned to adapting research methods for a locked-down world. As the pandemic response and measures to control its spread continued into the medium and longer term, it became apparent that many research methods, especially the ‘big three’ most commonly used methods of questionnaires, interviews and focus groups, could hardly be conducted in the same ways as they had been before the pandemic, and therefore had to be adapted and rethought. The pandemic presented researchers with many challenges – and some opportunities. These included opportunities to reassess the utility of more conventional methods in unusual circumstances, and to try out less familiar methods that could meet both existing and new research needs.
The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 is only one of a number of possible global emergencies that may occur due to the outbreak of an infectious pathogen like the novel SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. Indeed, the global pandemic preparedness body warned in September 2019 that there was ‘a very real threat of a rapidly moving, highly lethal pandemic of a respiratory pathogen killing 50 to 80 million people and wiping out nearly 5% of the world’s economy’ (Global Preparedness Monitoring Board, 2019, 6). ‘Global’ emergencies may also arise due to natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis or volcanic eruptions, or human-caused disasters such as major industrial accidents, conflicts and mass displacements of people, with effects that are severe and extensive and carry transboundary implications. Global emergencies are a perennial threat. Research is needed in such urgent and challenging circumstances, and non-emergency-related research may have important justifications to continue. However, the conduct of research during global emergencies raises complex practical and ethical challenges (Nuffield Council on Bioethics, 2020).
Researchers around the world have responded to the new challenges in diverse, thoughtful and creative ways: adapting data collection methods, rethinking researcher–researched relationships and giving new consideration to critical needs. These include the need to foster care and resilience for research participants, among researchers and in researcher–researched and research–community relationships. A magnifying glass has been placed on research ethics, and it is vital to revisit key questions of need, burden, benefit, protection, care and transformation.
This book is the first in a series of three Rapid Response volumes showcasing methods and emerging approaches to researching in a pandemic-overshadowed age. Volume 2 focuses on care and resilience and Volume 3 focuses on creativity and ethics. Together, these books aim to help academic, applied and practitioner-researchers worldwide reflect on and adapt to the new challenges of getting research done, ensuring its quality and appropriateness and making sure that people and places involved are cared for and treated ethically.
This first volume focuses on the immediate dimensions of response and reassessment. Its 11 contributions fall into three main sections: going digital; working with methods in hand; and reassessing needs and capabilities.
The first section examines the need to ‘go digital’ by pivoting in-person, specific time- and place-based research to interactions using digital tools. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted particular challenges for acquiring reliable primary data in low- and middle-income countries, even as it has forced researchers to rapidly shift to computer-assisted methods of interviewing. In Chapter 1, Mridulya Narasimhan, Jagannath R and Fabrizio Valenti evaluate a large, multi-site and multi-topic sample of computer-aided telephone interviews in India and Bangladesh, and offer an analysis focused on questions of optimizing response rates while preserving reliability and validity. In Chapter 2, Helena Vicente and seven colleagues study different methods of engaging students in science camps across six European countries. They consider the impact of moving these engagements online, while conducting research to assess possible changes in participants’ scientific perceptions and beliefs. In Chapter 3, Louise Couceiro discusses the development of electronic ‘reader response toolkits’ inspired by design research, to elicit UK children’s responses to reading contemporary texts about women’s lives. In Chapter 4, Almighty Nchafack and Deborah Ikhile, two African women researchers using Skype interviews to conduct research in the United Kingdom and Uganda, explore the theme of the ‘digital divide’ and its implications for doing research using online tools. Chapter 5, by Emmanuel Ndhlovu, examines the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in rural Zimbabwe, using text messaging and voice notes for data gathering, and discusses the advantages and challenges of using these new digital methods for research.
The second section of this volume addresses the theme of going with methods that are in hand. In Chapter 6, Roxanne Connelly and Vernon Gayle reconsider the importance of social surveys based on nationally representative probability samples. They discuss the use of online non-probability samples, consider whether the rules of survey sampling should be relaxed under crisis conditions and assess the utility of non-probability samples and the usefulness of compensatory weighting. In Chapter 7, Sascha Reinstein and Eli Malvaceda conduct a structured meta-review of psychological and social research projects undertaken on the COVID-19 pandemic in Peru. Their qualitative systematic literature review allows them to identify and assess the strengths, weaknesses and gaps in the research that has been conducted. In Chapter 8, Judith Henze, Nicole Paganini and Silke Stöber offer an account of developing farmer-led research to examine the challenges, coping strategies and innovations of local food producers and city dwellers during the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Indonesia, using smartphones for data collection. Their initial findings show that the pandemic exacerbated socio-economic injustices across these very different research locations, while also pointing to key sources of research resilience, cooperation and trust.
The third section of this volume reassesses different needs and capabilities. In Chapter 9, Paramjeet Chawla assesses the ethical and practical considerations when turning to secondary analysis instead of using face-to-face methods of assessing youth capabilities in heterogeneous urban settings in India. In Chapter 10, Arun Verma and Nikolaos Bizas reconsider the role of evidence and evaluation in Save the Children UK’s services for children and families living in poverty. The pandemic has forced this organization to swiftly adapt and reorient its evaluation, research and emergency responses. The authors draw on their organization’s global work to reassess ethics, quality and rigour, embedding an ethical perspective and safeguarding responsibilities in adapting their evaluation approach. Chapter 11, by Natalia Reinoso Chávez, Santiago Castro-Reyes and Luisa Fernanda Echeverry, presents a ‘systematization of experience’ approach to researching the intercultural dimension of psychosocial assistance programmes for displaced people (primarily Afro-Colombians or Indigenous peoples) in Colombia during the COVID-19 pandemic. The ‘systematization of experience’ offers a participatory approach to educational and community-based knowledge production originating in Latin America, as a culturally responsive alternative to conventional evaluation methods.
Taken together, these chapters offer a window into the working lives of researchers around the world at a particularly challenging time for everyone. They show researchers responding to a global pandemic and reassessing their approaches, methods and ethics with thoughtfulness, adaptiveness, criticality and care. We hope that you will find useful ideas and inspiration here for your own research projects.
References
Global Preparedness Monitoring Board (2019) A World at Risk: Annual Report on Global Preparedness for Health Emergencies, Geneva: World Health Organization.
Nuffield Council on Bioethics (2020) Research in Global Health Emergencies: Ethical Issues – Short Report, London: Nuffield Council on Bioethics.
