We’re here, you just don’t know how to reach us: A reflexive examination of research with citizens on the socio-economic margins
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Research that aims to trouble social, cultural, and economic disparities is usually conducted with the best of socially just intentions. Still, embedded in all research processes is the potential to disrupt and, simultaneously, reproduce mechanisms of power that enable inequalities. Hence, as Bourdieu (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992) insists, such efforts require reflexive examination that involves an interrogation of practices and regulations guiding research. Drawing upon my own reflexive inquiry, I address in this article some of the methodological challenges that surfaced when I conducted ethnographic doctoral research with socially and economically disadvantaged young adults. I discuss participant recruitment, retention concerns, and ways to support participants’ involvement in research. I aim to expose assumptions in research practices that may have inadvertently reproduced some of the inequalities that this research attempted to disturb and to suggest ways to address these challenges. Résumé La recherche qui aborde les disparités sociales, culturelles, et économiques est généralement effectuée avec les meilleures intentions socialement juste. Pourtant, intégrée dans tous les processus de recherche est le potentiel de perturber et, simultanément, de reproduire les mécanismes du pouvoir qui permettent aux inégalités. Ainsi, comme Bourdieu (Bourdieu et Wacquant, 1992) insiste, de tels efforts nécessitent un examen des pratiques et des règles régissant la recherche. Je m’adresse dans cet article les défis méthodologiques qui ont surgi lorsque j’ai effectué des recherches ethnographiques de doctorat avec des jeunes adultes qui sont socialement et économiquement défavorisés. Je discute le recrutement des participants, la rétention des préoccupations, et les moyens d’aider les participants à rester impliqués dans la recherche. Je vise à exposer des suppositions dans les pratiques de recherche qui peut reproduit les inégalités que cette recherche a tenté déranger et suggérer des moyens d’aborder ces défis.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.113 | 0.080 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.030 | 0.119 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.025 | 0.028 |
| Open science | 0.004 | 0.018 |
| Research integrity | 0.008 | 0.014 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".