A common critique of psychological research is that the subjects of that research are disproportionately male, mostly white, college students. A common refrain from the researchers in response to that criticism is that recruitment to studies is difficult. College students are convenient which apparently outweighs the fact that they also reflect the racial, ethnic and social backgrounds of the majority of those academicians doing the research. But even when researchers go out into the community, the samples often remain distorted. During the conference today on dyadic coping and the stress of cancer, which was enlightening overall, the first presenter noted that since 1995 75% of research on dyadic coping has been spent assessing white, middle class college educated individuals. Many of the other presentations essentially proved the point while giving a guilty nod of acknowledgment to that presenter as if it were his issue, a segregated concern, and not an indictment of the academy as a whole. Good and decent, talented people all, they then proceeded in reporting research that, by and large, reflected that same reality. How much longer are we going to design interventions for mental and physical health rooted in research drawing on samples skewed by race, gender, ethnicity and class, research based on the perhaps unintended assumption that the white male experience can be generalized as a neutral universal framework. This research is not only biased, it will generally be ineffective in providing intervention strategies for working with people with different life experiences who face the problems it purports to address. It actually impacts what areas of needs are even studied to begin with. A hopeful sign however occurred in the final panel of the day where three young female graduate and post-doctoral students cited their hopes for the future of the field of dyadic coping research. All of them addressed these concerns directly seeing them as central to their current and future work.
Posted on: Sat, 22 Jun 2013 01:30:02 +0000
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