Mode 2 Research at CRE-MSD
Introduction
A wave of change has washed through the world of research that is challenging our traditional notions of what academic research is all about. Social and political pressure is being brought to bear on scientific academia to break down its walls of exclusivity and disciplinary boundaries, and prove its economic usefulness to the issues that directly impact the lay public. Conversations are now taking place on how researchers need to engage with the public, be responsive to stakeholder problems and include stakeholders in the research process. New centres of research are encouraging their researchers to engage in applied research, to be interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary and inter-sectoral, and to make links with end-users of research (for example the Canadian Institutes for Health Research[11] and the US National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety NORA Sector Councils, http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/NORA/sector.html).
This change has led to a dichotomy between different kinds of research emerging from different paradigms of knowledge production, now labelled as Mode 1 and Mode 2 research [7, 9, 29]. Mode I research, the traditional academic discourse, is curiosity-driven, etiological, basic research, that is discipline-based, with a gold standard methodology of the randomized control trial, and peer review as the major safeguard of quality. The growing alternative is Mode 2 research, that is co-created between researchers and their community, and is focused on collaborative inquiry.
This paradigm builds upon and brings together a number of fields of research that are stakeholder focused, such as the evaluation of stakeholder participation [38],program evaluation [10, 16, 30, 34], action, applied and field-based research[14, 25, 36] and the role of intermediary allied health professions in research[30, 31].
Mode 2 research advocates for more flexible and often inter-disciplinary methods (quasi-experimental), and more general guidelines for quality. It is more participative, inclusive, problem- and solution focused, embedded in different contexts, and embracing of all kinds of knowing and knowledge. Its major objective is the development of the problem-solving capabilities of society and its major focus is creating knowledge with practical outcomes.
In a collaborative Mode 2 research project, the boundaries and roles between the networked researchers and organizations are more permeable. Teams are built of researchers and stakeholders (Table 1). The latter can be citizens, community members, or workplace parties, or intermediaries such as allied health workers, public health units, health and safety associations, unions, or clinicians. The teams of collaborating researchers and stakeholders have the opportunity to conceptualize the research problem together, come to a mutual understanding on common issues, and engage together in the change intervention.
Mode 2 research is an effective knowledge transfer technique that will increase the opportunity to produce, disseminate and apply knowledge at a greater intensity and pace [7]. (This focus on knowledge transfer is how Mode 2 most clearly distinguishes itself from participatory action research). The field of knowledge transfer has been trying to establish which techniques are effective in getting research to practitioners [18, 27], and from its roots in adult education has advocated for stakeholder involvement in the research process.
The concept of bringing together multiple stakeholders to a research study has a relatively long history in the literature of knowledge transfer [1, 17, 41]. There have been evaluations of the utilization of research by stakeholders involved in the research process in topic areas such as education [39, 40]; among organizations such as community health networks [12]; with clinicians [2, 13];with occupational therapists [7]; and health policy decision-makers [5, 26]. Particularly in policy research, the best predictor of research use has been found to be early and continued involvement of relevant decision makers [3, 18, 41, 43]. Yet there is still much to be learned about increasing the involvement of workplace parties in research, increasing the uptake of research by workplace decision-makers, and evaluating this process as a knowledge-transfer technique [21, 22, 24, 35].
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