Collaborating Across Knowledge Paradigms

We serve as evaluators for a program aimed at engaging underrepresented minority high school students in research to encourage entry to STEM careers and the development of critical thinking and communication skills. Through our evaluation, we seek to understand students’ program experiences by providing data aimed at program improvement; we also examine the program’s impact on students’ STEM efficacy and their desire to enter STEM professions. In this case, our clients are experienced public health clinicians and researchers while our own backgrounds are in education; thus, this partnership provides the opportunity to collaborate with, learn from, and build the evaluation capacity of researchers from different fields who approach research through paradigms that differ from our own. One challenge we have faced is that, while we have strong qualitative data indicating students’ growth in key outcomes, our client prefers quantitative data and prefers to utilize previously validated survey items. Thus, we have engaged in ongoing discussions with the client to identify survey items that meet their needs while gently encouraging them to allow us create items that are customized to their program. Our work with this client has encouraged us to reflect on our own approach to evaluation and research while maintaining flexible thinking and a willingness to understand other perspectives. We are continuing to communicate with this client to evaluate their program in a way that meets their needs for conducting research and demonstrating program impact.