TITLE:
Moving Parts and Balancing Acts: Building and Maintaining a Collaborative Community-Based Research Partnership in Detroit
AUTHORS:
Juliette Roddy, Paul Draus, Kanzoni Asabigi, Erin White
KEYWORDS:
Economics; Ethnography; Collaboration; Partnership; Community; Community-Based Research; Sex Work; Drug Treatment Court
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Applied Sociology,
Vol.3 No.1,
March
18,
2013
ABSTRACT: This paper describes the process of developing a research proposal for
submission to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in collaboration with an
urban public health agency. Two university-based researchers from different
social science disciplines, each with previous experience in substance abuse research,
invested significant time learning about the key questions and concerns of
participants in several community-based programs, including clients,
administrators and professionals from the county drug court, law enforcement,
and substance abuse treatment and recovery services. They then developed a proposal
which integrated their own academic interests with the questions and concerns
that they uncovered in their preliminary research. After the proposal was
written, the researchers presented it to an audience of community partners. Following
the successful funding of the study, negotiations with various partners
continued throughout the data collection process. The paper concludes with some
suggestions for other researchers who may wish to engage in this type of
applied, collaborative, interdisciplinary research.