Poster #19 - Advocating for an Increasingly Representative and Community-Engaged Model of Developmental Science: A Structured Review

• In Event: Poster Session 04

Abstract

The research enterprise is fraught with institutional, systemic, and historic barriers that deter oppressed and marginalized communities from greater participation in studies and researchers from becoming more greatly involved with community members. Historic discrimination, deception, and exploitation are among the factors contributing to mistrust in research (Smirnoff et al., 2018). Presently, members of marginalized communities may view much of scientific research as transactional, wherein features and experiences of members of oppressed communities are primarily engaged to become results often not communicated beyond academic journals and other such forums (Scharff et al., 2010; Wertheimer et al., 2011). Findings that highlight the experiences of communities of color or those experiencing poverty, for example, are often framed using a deficit perspective, such as in the case of the so-called 30-million-word gap (Romeo et al., 2018). Some of this harm to communities may be attributed to academic structures that do not value community engagement and lack of actionable information that would allow for more scholars to engage with the communities of focus in their work. Further, a scientific model that is not community-engaged is potentially detrimental to the validity and generalizability of scholarly findings, such as in the case of largely employing convenience samples (Nielsen et al., 2017).

Synthesizing work across domains, this pre-registered (https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/VB9CE) structured review will investigate how developmental science, broadly construed, can and should become more inclusive, representative, and community-oriented. Topics for review include the following:
1) Current methods and frameworks for community-engaged research, such as community-based participatory research, community participatory action research, and community partnership more generally (Stoecker, 2013).
2) Practices and takeaways from allied or distinctive fields utilizing community-centered methods (ie. public health, sociology, environmental science) (Liu et al., 2021; Loh, 2016; McAllister et al., 2003)
3) Institutional barriers to community-engaged research, including the publish-or-perish paradigm and geographic flexibility demands placed on academics (Bell & Lewis Jr., 2022; Marwell, et al., 1979)
4) Community barriers to participating in science, such as general research mistrust and historic exploitation (Scharff et al., 2010; Wertheimer et al., 2011)
5) Issues in representation within research populations, such as the overreliance on convenience samples and use of exclusionary neuroimaging practices (Nketia et al., 2021; Nielsen et al., 2017; Giloramo et al., 2022)

Based on this extensive review, the authors will present recommendations for how developmental scientists, regardless of subspecialty, can ethically and meaningfully engage communities and increase the representativeness of their subject samples. Further, we argue that while community-centered, inclusive science has clear benefits in terms of advancing equity and justice, it also adds to the rigor and validity of our findings and is a crucial step to actively engage the Belmont principles of respect for persons, beneficence, and justice.

Authors

• Ellie Kathleen Taylor, University of Maryland - College Park
  Presenting Author

• Rachel R. Romeo, University of Maryland - College Park