Here's my research methods myth that has to go! Qualitative research is easy; it’s just words after all. Over the last few months, I’ve heard several colleagues and students say, “I had no idea qualitative research was so much work!” 🤦‍♀️

All research, but especially primary data collection, takes more time than we hope. Part of this is a function of the fact that everyone is busy and grabbing their attention is getting harder. The other part is that despite how awesome we know our own research is, other people probably don’t have the same investment in it that we do. Relatedly I think time becomes harder to navigate when we aren’t the ones in direct control of moving the project forward. It’s the waiting that gets us.

Research is magic! Since I was very young my favorite question has been, “why?” Why does that work that way? Why is that lake named that way? Why did that person do that to the other person? Why? Why? Why? You get the idea, and you should also have great sympathy for my parents 😜. Knowing how ideas, events, and people were connected made me feel like I was in on some giant secret. A secret that I could then use to solve big and important problems.

The promise of the summer “break” has started to fade, more and more people are back in the office these days, and in the south, there’s been a cold front giving us a break from the 110-degree (40+°C) weather so it’s basically fall now (😜). A new academic year is about to begin! (Or is it?)

So, you’ve managed to get your manuscript submitted, it wasn’t desk rejected or rejected by the reviewers (💃), but now you must work through the reviewer comments. R&R’s, or revise and resubmits, are accomplishments that you should celebrate. Your project, and manuscript, adds something to the literature, it just needs some help to make sure that readers fully appreciate what you did.

“Publish or perish”. Everyone in the academic world has heard this phrase at some point in reference to the need to get research out into the peer reviewed literature. Like it or not, publications are one of the most important indictors of research productivity. But publishing doesn’t need to be that hard.

As I’m prepping syllabi for the upcoming semester, I’ve been thinking a lot about generative AI (GenAI). While I’ve only starting using it often recently, I know our students have been using it to clean up writing, complete literature searches, compose emails, and maybe (sometimes) writing up entire assignments. This hadn’t really been bothering me, but my perspective has evolved some recently.

I asked LinkedIn research friends last week for their biggest research productivity barriers. Two comments stuck out to me. These comments didn’t stick out because they were weird, but because they were so mundane. Slow collaborators and slow journal responses.

Making friends with communities is hard, and I can promise you the chance of a community partner waiting to meet you outside your office door, or even sending you a cold email, is very small.

So, if community members aren’t tracking us down, how can we get in touch with them to share about how our work could help improve their lives?

I think one of the things that folks struggle with around CBPR and community driven research design is the idea that we will end up having to do “bad” research. Patients and community members don’t know the research literature, haven’t studied like we have, and don’t possess the skills needed to interpret and contextualize findings. Of course, these things are true. But that’s not really the point of partnering with communities, is it? If the community knew how to do research, they wouldn’t need us, would they 😜.

A key component of redesigning your research program for impact is connecting with the community you wish to impact. But connecting with communities can feel daunting if you haven’t done it before. Read on for some important first steps!