The BIAS FREE Framework

Lillywhite

2021

Societies

The origin of equity/equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) initiatives at universities are rooted in the 2005 Athena SWAN (Scientific Women’s Academic Network) charter from Advance HE in the UK, which has the purpose of initiating actions that generate gender equality in UK universities. Since then, Advance HE also set up a “race charter” to deal with equality issues that are experienced by ethnic staff and students within higher education. Today “equality, diversity and inclusion” and “equity, diversity and inclusion” (from now on both called EDI) are used as phrases by universities in many countries to highlight ongoing efforts to rectify the problems that are linked to EDI of students, non-academic staff, and academic staff, whereby the focus broadened from gender to include other underrepresented groups, including disabled students, disabled non-academic staff, and disabled academic staff. How EDI efforts are operationalized impacts the success and utility of EDI efforts for disabled students, non-academic staff, and academic staff, and impacts the social situation of disabled people in general. As such, we analysed in a first step using a scoping review approach, how disabled students, non-academic staff, and academic staff are engaged with in the EDI focused academic literature. Little engagement (16 sources, some only abstracts, some abstracts, and full text) with disabled students, non-academic staff, and academic staff was found. This bodes ill for the utility of existing EDI efforts for disabled students, non-academic staff, and academic staff, but also suggests an opening for many fields to critically analyse EDI efforts in relation to disabled students, non-academic staff, and academic staff, the intersectionality of disabled people with other EDI groups and the impact of the EDI efforts on the social situation of disabled people beyond educational settings. The problematic findings are discussed through the lens of ability studies and EDI premises, as evident in EDI policy documents, EDI academic, and non-academic literature covering non-disability groups, and policy documents, such as the 2017 “UNESCO Recommendation on Science and Scientific Researchers” and the 1999 “UNESCO World Conference on Sciences” recommendations that engage with the situation of researchers and research in universities.

Section: Conclusion and Future Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Equity/Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) in Universities: The Case of Disabled People

Lillywhite

2021

Societies

“…The term "bias" rarely showed up in our scoping review. The BIAS FREE ("Building an Integrative Analytic System for Recognizing and Eliminating inEquities") framework [261,262] lists 20 questions covering three types of problems: maintaining an existing hierarchy, failing to examine differences, and using double standards [262]. The BIAS FREE framework could be used to make visible the impacts of "environmental activism", "environmentalism", "environmental governance", "environmental action*", "environmental advocacy" and "environmental steward*".…”

Section: Opportunities To Engage With Edimentioning

confidence: 99%

Potential Impact of Environmental Activism: A Survey and a Scoping Review

Gill

2023

Sustainability

Environmental issues increasingly impact the well-being, the ability to have a good life, of people, especially members of marginalized groups. Dealing with environmental issues is a long-standing and increasing focus of activism. Youth are increasingly involved in environmental activism. One focus of environmental education is how to instill the role of being a change agent into students. Marginalized groups experience many problems in relation to environmental issues, and environmental activism impacts the lived experience of marginalized groups in diverse ways. A pre-study scoping review suggested a gap in academic inquiry around “the impact of environmental activism”. The aim of our study was to decrease this gap and to better understand the perceived impact of environmental activism. We used two approaches to achieve this aim. In the first step, we used a survey to ask undergraduate students about their views on the impact of environmental activism. Given the results of the survey and that students need access to information to be able to fulfill their roles as critical thinkers and change agents, we then performed a scoping review of abstracts from Scopus, Web of Science, and the 70 databases accessible through EBSCO-HOST to ascertain what topics and which marginalized groups are engaged with in the academic inquiry of environmental activism. We found that participants felt that environmental activism has an impact on all the social groups and entities we gave them as choices, although there were differences in how positively they viewed the different groups and entities being affected. The participants also indicated that many of the well-being indicators were impacted by environmental activism, although around 30% felt that they did not have information they needed to form an opinion. Finally, our participants felt that different social groups have different ability expectations. Our scoping review found that many of the groups and indicators that our participants felt were impacted by environmental activism were not covered in the abstracts we analyzed. Our findings suggest many gaps and the need for actions and opportunities in relation to the topic of the “impact of environmental activism”.

“…Another tool one could use is the BIAS FREE (Building an Integrative Analytic System for Recognizing and Eliminating inEquities) framework [277,278]. The BIAS FREE framework lists 20 analytical questions, divided into three sets of problems: maintaining an existing hierarchy, failing to examine differences, and using double standards [278]. The BIAS FREE framework allows people to identify biases in the environment they are in [279] such as the EDMPP literature or EDMPP discussions they are exposed to.…”

Section: Conclusion and Future Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Emergency and Disaster Management, Preparedness, and Planning (EDMPP) and the ‘Social’: A Scoping Review

Lillywhite

2022

Sustainability

The importance of emergency and disaster management, preparedness, and planning (EDMPP) is ever increasing with COVID-19 being one recent EDMPP challenge. EDMPP is impacted by and impacts the ‘social’ of individuals and societies. Therefore, a thorough understanding of the ‘social’ is important for providing EDMPP. Marginalized populations are over-proportionally impacted by emergencies and disasters and often overlooked in EDMPP. Therefore, it is especially important to understand the lived experience of marginalized groups and to involve marginalized groups in providing knowledge for EDMPP. Technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning and reasoning, e-coaching, other decision support systems and Bayesian belief networks are increasingly employed for EDMPP. However, biases and other problems in the use of technologies for EDMPP are noted. Understanding the ‘social’ of marginalized populations and others is essential for designing algorithms and other technologies that are not biased towards marginalized populations and others. The phrase “equity, diversity, and inclusion” (EDI), other EDI linked phrases, and EDI frameworks are increasingly employed in workplaces to improve research, education, and workplace environments for marginalized groups such as women, Indigenous Peoples, visible minorities, racialized minorities, disabled people, people with disabilities and LGBTQ2S+. EDMPP actors are workers. Using EDI in EDMPP could improve the EDMPP situation of marginalized groups by encouraging knowledge production by and about marginalized groups related to EDMPP. The main objective of this study was to map out the engagement with the ‘social’, EDI and marginalized groups in the EDMPP-focused academic literature in general and the EDMPP academic literature covering disabled people, patients, technologies and COVID-19. A scoping review using the academic databases SCOPUS, Web of Science, and the databases accessible under Compendex and EBSCO-HOST were employed to fulfill the objectives. The study found little coverage of marginalized populations and EDI phrases and frameworks, and a lack of many terms linked to the ‘social’ in the literature searched. These gaps need to be filled given the importance of EDMPP to the ‘social’ of individuals and societies.