‘What You Do is Important But How You Do it is More Important’

Abstract

Evidence on the methods followed by non-Indigenous researchers for conducting research that involves Indigenous people in Australia is sparse. This paper describes the methodology and steps followed by a non-Indigenous researcher for engaging with men from an Aboriginal community in rural Victoria in conducting mental health services research. It describes the process adopted to initiate research and build research capacity within an Indigenous community where Indigenous researchers were unavailable and the local communities were ill-equipped to conduct research themselves. The methodology followed was informed by the values and ethics guidelines of the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council, the decolonising methodology of Linda Tuhiwai Smith as well as methods suggested by other authors. Lessons learnt included providing for a long time frame, which is necessary to develop relationships and trust with individuals and their Communities, 1 adopting a flexible approach and engaging cultural advisers who represent different sections of the Community.

Reaching the hard-to-reach: a systematic review of strategies for improving health and medical research with socially disadvantaged groups

“…Of the 31 literature reviews, 10 focused on sampling [34,136-138,149-154] and 33 primary source articles on sampling issues were found [32-34,38,44,47,51,53,54,57],[60-62,67,74,77-79,81,84,91,95],[97,102-104,113,116,118,122,126,128] (see Table 4). Random population samples are often insufficient to accumulate large enough samples of hard-to-reach groups.…”

“…One option for creating a sampling frame for specific socially disadvantaged groups is to collaborate with community organisations with access to those groups and to draw a convenience sample through that organisation [44,47,54,60-62,67,74,103,116],[118,122,128,136]. Benoit et al [122] variously defined community group as any group with high access to the target population and partnerships have taken three main forms: a) the community group helping researchers gain access to an otherwise hard-to-reach group; b) a reciprocal relationship in which community members and researchers have knowledge and learn from the other; and c) community-initiated research projects that seek academic partnerships and use the outcomes to direct policy and program delivery.…”

“…Some reports have suggested that engagement of local peer or known community members as ‘recruiters’ will increase trust and response rates [21,40,55,82,96,105,121,123],[124]. Similarly, the use of community advisory groups is likely to be beneficial and increase the perception that the research is community-driven and responsive [28,47,100,113,118,135]. Germino et al [28] used a comprehensive community based approach to recruit a representative sample of African American cancer survivors.…”

“…Strategies for addressing the barrier of gatekeepers include employing gatekeepers as project recruitment officers and involving them in the research [22,93,100,113,118]; ensuring that community authorities are informed about the research and adequately consulted [113,114]; and paying health professionals through financial incentives to assist with recruitment [125,143]. Loftin et al [71] reported slow recruitment and low response rates in a study using primary health care provider identification and recruitment of African Americans into diabetes research.…”

“…In total, 29 studies [45,48,49,52,54-56,59,60,63],[68,74,85,90,96-98,100,105,106],[110,111,113-115,117,118,120,124] and seven reviews [133-138,140] explored barriers and solutions for collecting research data with participants from socially disadvantaged groups (see Table 6). …”