194 – Twenty years of RMS for CRFS: Next Steps

[00:00:07] Lucie: Hi, and welcome to the IDEMS Podcast. My name’s Lucie Hazelgrove Planel, I’m a Social Impact Scientist and anthropologist, and I’m here today with David Stern, one of the founding directors of IDEMS. Hi David.

[00:00:18] David: Hi Lucie. I’m looking forward to another episode where we go back to where my heart is, the West African region.

[00:00:25] Lucie: Yeah, so I would like to discuss with you this aspect of supporting researchers in actually planning how to do research, like right at the beginning of the research process. ‘Cause our role, I think the role has changed a bit, I haven’t been very involved in all of this. I’ve been involved in like, when people design questionnaires.

[00:00:51] David: That’s a small part of research.

[00:00:53] Lucie: But it’s a small part as you say.

[00:00:55] David: I would argue that that’s once you’ve decided what research you are doing, once you have your research questions, once you know what you want, then maybe you’d get the questionnaire as something you do within that. So that’s more implementation than the planning.

[00:01:10] Lucie: Yeah.

[00:01:11] David: And I have to confess that I have, if you want, in my tenure, which has been over 10 years within the research methods support group, I’ve, neglected is a strong word, but I’ve not prioritised the planning as much as I would have liked to and that somebody else in that position might have done.

[00:01:38] Lucie: But that’s normal for everybody to have, a particular interest and a particular way of working it. And I’m gonna say at first.

[00:01:45] David: Yes, exactly, because this is something we’ve been wanting to strengthen for a long time. I’ve personally found that the efforts that I’ve been putting into are sort of more structural change, and structural change related to the research planning is actually very difficult.

[00:02:08] Lucie: What do you mean by structural change then?

[00:02:11] David: Good question. I would argue that the work that we’ve done on the internships, on building the local capacity, that’s structural change, because that means that there are structures in place which can now affect what is possible. Similarly, I would argue my best success related to research planning is the work I’ve done with Fuma Gaskya back in around 2017, 2015, 16, 17, 18, where, on the back of that, they built the Fuma app, they have the capability of collecting their own data, they manage their own data. This has changed how they plan research.

In fact, their research planning process is now embedded in the Farmer Federation structures. And so that’s something where, again, it’s the structural change that I’ve achieved. But others who I’ve worked with who are really good at supporting research planning, do so in ways that I find much harder. They’re very good at just being in the moment. And I think the word, the term I quite like is a nudging the research and the research planning by giving input, helping people to take a step. I’m often too ambitious in what I’m trying to support in different ways.

[00:03:39] Lucie: It’s not necessarily too ambitious, but you see very far.

[00:03:43] David: Yes, exactly. But it holds me back in terms of actually supporting research planning, is quite often that ambition doesn’t belong in the planning. I’m now lost in thoughts about things which are beyond what people are currently wanting to do. And I remember, I believe you were, yes, we were together at a inception meeting a few years ago with Fuma, who we have been working with for so long and where I’ve discussed some of the structural changes that have happened, and I’m so proud of what they’ve done and where they’ve gone. And I had the opportunity with yourself to be there as part of their inception meeting when they were planning their next phase.

[00:04:30] Lucie: Yeah.

[00:04:31] David: And it was only halfway through that meeting that I suddenly recognised that we weren’t communicating as well as I felt in the past. And that’s because I had a different understanding of what they had already achieved and what the implications of that were for research methods.

Whereas they were at a phase where, they’re not research methods experts, they were wanting the comfort of research methods, which their researchers understand and are more familiar with. And so I was pushing too fast or too far when actually the right approach at that point was to support them to take their next step.

I was already seeing what I hope they’ll get to going beyond. And what I’m really excited about because I feel they are trendsetters in terms of research and how research can happen in the future. In my mind, they’re already the leaders in this.

[00:05:35] Lucie: You’d forgotten that there were lots of other small steps that actually needed to be taken, which they were very much involved in those small steps. Small but very necessary.

[00:05:45] David: Yeah. But also in terms of just the planning of their research, what I was pushing for, and I wasn’t pushing very hard, but I had understood what they were wanting to do in terms of actually taking the learnings of what I’ve learned from observing what they’ve achieved. And then what they’re now looking to do, which is very exciting, putting those together.

Whereas what was the right approach for them is they were now entering a new type of research. They didn’t want to use the learnings from what they’ve already done and where they’ve pushed the boundaries yet because it’s not known how to do that. They wanted to do the new research using standard methods in a way which is absolutely appropriate.

But this is where I find, in general, others I know, and Ric Coe is a really good example of this, he is a master at meeting people where they are and helping them to take that next step. And I’m willing to sort of raise my hands up and say, this is a skill others have better than me. There are many things, in fact, most things, there is someone out there who does it better than me. I just combine quite a lot of things.

This is something where watching someone like Ric doing this with partners, these are skills that I have some of, but others are even better at. And so part of what I think you and Roger have been discussing in this whole series of episodes, Roger is another example of someone who is just really good at meeting people where they are and helping them to recognise, ‘huh have you thought about this’? And that would be a good next step from where you are.

And that’s a really wonderful skill that I still aspire to. I have some of, but it isn’t something I would argue I am a master at in the same way that the likes of Roger and Ric are. They’re real masters of being able to support research preparation by meeting people where they are in terms of the questions they have, and helping to say, okay, from where you are, what’s the next step?

And that’s the key I would argue with really good research method support for the planning phase.

[00:08:06] Lucie: Yes, exactly. Well, I mean, for different aspects both the visions are needed.

[00:08:11] David: Yeah, I believe on the capacity building side, that’s where I have real strength and that’s where I believe the team we’re building up in different ways will be able to change the structures. Changing structures, I believe that’s something which I’ve built a skillset, which I really trust myself on.

Whereas exactly this challenge of planning research to be able to take your knowledge as a researcher, but also as a community of researchers and add that next step is a skill which I am okay at, but I’m not the master that some others are.

[00:08:51] Lucie: I’ll gloss over the modesty there.

And what’s interesting about this is that within our team, this is one of the interesting things about developing a team to support the West Africa region, is that we all come with different skill sets, and this is something that we want to help support our team in West Africa build the skills to be able to do themselves.

And I think this is really important because that sort of support in planning, it comes up more often, perhaps. The long-term ambition, it’s perhaps much more suited to somebody who doesn’t go into the region so often who joins when they can, as opposed to people who are in the same country who can answer the call whenever. The team is very available, I’m still sometimes surprised by how available they make themselves.

[00:09:38] David: But the point you are making, which is so important, is that we recognise that in terms of the research methods support on the planning side, the ideal is to have this done locally with people who have those skills.

And one of the things which comes out so nicely from the stories you and Roger have drawn out is the fact that Roger didn’t learn these skills from a textbook. There’s no theory where you can just go and read the textbook and do this. He learned this from practical experience and having good mentors.

[00:10:16] Lucie: It’s also though a continued interest in learning and the curiosity for new knowledge. I think that he definitely has that.

[00:10:23] David: And recognizing when your existing knowledge is not needed or when you need to think of something new, and when you have knowledge, which is appropriate, which you can bring to bear. One of the reasons I’ve not pushed our team forward to support with research planning yet, and I do want to push them forward to that when they’re ready, is that skill of knowing when you need to ask for help and when you need to get another opinion, an outside opinion, before giving advice, before stepping in is actually really hard.

I believe Roger’s told the tadpole story. This is a wonderful example of a very early experience he had, which was a story that I knew of and that helped me so much because actually this problem comes up time and time again in different forms.

The form, which I think I’ve mentioned in a previous episode before, but sits with me so strongly is with Fuma Gaskya, when they had their results which weren’t coming out clearly, and we decided to increase the plot sizes. And this choice of reducing the internal variability by having something where, if you want, that variability is averaged out over a larger plot. This means that you have more consistency in the results you are getting for a given plot.

And then the way that the results in terms of the treatment effects than just jumped out because of that larger plot size, it was just a fantastic experience for me to see a practical application of should you have more tadpoles in the jar, or should you have more jars. And the equivalent being, should you have more replications, more plots, or should you have bigger plots, where you are changing the nature of the variability and the reliability of your result.

[00:12:28] Lucie: But something else you’ve said just then that’s really interesting is that there isn’t a textbook for research methods support. You know, there is no training materials to support people in having this varied role where you’re coming in at different stages of somebody else’s research project in fields which are not your own. And this is something that we are thinking about developing then, and then these episodes might even form a part of a collection of resources.

[00:12:55] David: I think that to really do that we recognise is a very ambitious project, but I think it is one which I hope we get towards. It’s slightly easier to think of a community like our West African Community of Practice and the researchers involved in that, and think about how these experiences can form a textbook, which would actually help the development of the next generation of researchers to come through, and to help support them in their research because they have the experiences from the community of practice in a format which they can consume.

But taking it that next level to think through how would we train and how do we use these experiences to develop that curriculum, to train the next generation of people in research methods support is a whole nother case. And there are people internationally working on this. The group that I’d like to just mention here, it’s a guy called Eric Vance, and I should probably do an episode with him at some point. But they have built this network of LISAs. I’m gonna get the acronym wrong, but it’s Laboratory related to Statistics support.

And there’s a whole worldwide network of these now. And the essence of that idea is the idea of actually having people who can support the research at universities through research methods support. They don’t frame it quite like that. These are statistical advisories, but that is what’s needed in some sense.

And I think getting this to the stage where we could actually think through and probably work with the likes of Eric to try and figure out how do we actually create that generation of people who get this experience. There’s groups in Australia I know who have been building in statistical advisory courses into their programs. So there’s interesting international experience which relates to this.

[00:14:57] Lucie: And I’m aware I sort of misspoke in saying that yes, we’re sort of thinking of how to train the West Africa team.

[00:15:02] David: We are definitely thinking about that for them specifically and also to get that textbook to be able to do this at scale.

[00:15:09] Lucie: But you also mentioned quite a few times that it’s having these experiences. And I think that’s very much our approach at the moment of how to create these experiences for them so that they also learn by trialing in a way, by testing it, but not necessarily immediately going in the deep end, perhaps finding easier routes in for them.

[00:15:28] David: And it is something where I don’t think there’s any way you can build these skills theoretically. You have to build them through experience.

[00:15:39] Lucie: What I find fairly interesting about this is that in anthropology it’s also basically the same case. It is this social aspect of research methods support in a way. Or the awareness of creating connections perhaps that you need to build up yourself through trial and error and through hearing other people’s stories.

[00:15:57] David: But sorry, anthropology needs to take more credit for this. I would argue that what we are learning in terms of the research methods support is from the anthropological side, where you actually have, you need both qualitative and quantitative. And the point is, your quantitative people think it’s all about being able to run the methods to be able to run the analysis.

And what we are recognising is that, no, actually it is about the interactions, it’s about these softer skills of being able to understand and support the research, even identify the research questions. Correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s a big part of the research support or the research process in anthropology.

Whereas often on the statistics side, we’ve reduced it to what sample size should you calculate, and what analysis should you do to get statistical significance. And so I would argue that this is about taking those learnings from anthropology and anthropological research in its different forms, social science research more broadly, and actually bringing this into the broader research framework alongside more quantitative data and tying that together in a coherent way.

We are not alone in trying to do this. This is standard research methods support in many contexts, trying to bring together mixed methods, qualitative, quantitative. So there’s nothing I feel, which is uniquely us about trying to bring that together. But I do think that the idea of having your research support specialists, being experts at both qualitative and quantitative, that I think is something I’ve not heard much about.

[00:17:39] Lucie: Well, we’ll see if we can develop that. You’re giving us a challenge there, David.

[00:17:45] David: But I believe that it’s important because part of the reason I think statistical support is, failing is a strong word, but you’ve had some interesting discussions with Roger about this as well, about how it’s not serving the purpose for which it’s needed. And I think part of it is that it isn’t broad enough.

That breadth of being able to include the qualitative methods as an important part of it is needed to be able to make that support person useful, really useful. This is interestingly in contrast with the academic systems that are being built, which are very much about specialists.

[00:18:29] Lucie: Which means it is an uphill battle for us.

[00:18:32] David: Exactly.

[00:18:33] Lucie: But that makes it interesting.

[00:18:35] David: Yes. And it’s the fact that the likes of McKnight and the Global Collaboration for Resilient Food Systems have appreciated this approach so much, and they’ve helped to develop it, is something which again, it builds that confidence. We’re seeing results from this approach. And so, yeah, it is very much an uphill battle because if you do get these research methods specialists, where do they get employed? They don’t fit into standard academic structures.

These are big questions, big challenges up ahead.

[00:19:12] Lucie: Great. Thank you so much, David, for a lovely conversation and interesting conversation again.

[00:19:17] David: Thank you.