Thoughts on Collaboration

Three years ago, I was contacted because of my work with a local domestic violence and sexual assault agency and my background as a legal psychologist. The person was reaching out about a case in my county involving an Amish perpetrator. I can honestly say that I had no idea where that one phone call would take me. (But, can’t we say that about a lot in life?) Now, three years later, I have this whole new network in my life, knowledge of cultures that were really just on the periphery of my life before, and some really awesome collaborators for research.

That phone call led to some other phone calls that led to some other phone calls that led to a research collaboration with Mary Byler, Rhoda Witmer, and Jasper Hoffman. We spent a lot of time working together in various ways to create a survey about child sexual abuse about conservative religious groups. We also had some amazing support from people who wanted help us create a survey that really reached our audience. I won’t mention them by name for their own safety, and the fact that safety is a concern for some of them really underscores why this study was so important.

As much as I appreciate the work of our “language consultants”, it was Mary, Rhoda, and Jasper who also wanted to go beyond that and really engage in the research process by taking part in IRB training and working to write up that research for publication in a professional journal. Getting real – this entire study really exists because of Mary…but, that is a whole other blog post. Mary, Rhoda, and Jasper spent hours working on the IRB training, developing the survey, gathering and analyzing the information, and writing up the manuscript. I’m really in awe of these women. I’ve learned so much from them, and it really bothers me that I keep hearing people are diminishing their work on this.

More than that, Rhoda and I have worked on an additional two projects, and I’m pretty excited that they will be presented *gulp* next week! Rhoda and I were really only going to do one project, but her work and effort (and the support of people willing to share the study) led to us having enough participants to do a factor analysis. I’m still geeking out over that. 🙂 It’s been awesome to be part of this process with her, and I enjoy learning from her perspectives.

And, at the end of the day, I think one of the things that I have enjoyed so much about this is the ability to learn from and give support to each other. Women’s voices are so often silenced, and it’s especially difficult when you realize how often other women are doing the silencing. Rather than supporting each other on our own paths, we jockey for power or prestige over each other, we demean and diminish those whose paths are different from our own, or we simply tell others that they aren’t quite good enough or strong enough to use their own voices. I can understand why those things happen, I can probably cite chapter and verse about internalized misogyny and a need to claim power, but I still find them a particularly hard blow. It’s been wonderful having a group of such strong women to work with on these projects: women with integrity, women who will acknowledge their strengths and weaknesses, and women who are committed to their own growth.

I am so excited about these upcoming presentations next week, and I can’t wait to go on about the manuscript, but I just wanted to take a moment to reflect on what it means to collaborate on research, to work together in the context of an ethical process that requires additional training, and to acknowledge what each person is doing as part of that process. I have learned so much from these collaborations (I hope they can say the same 🙂 ), and I hope that everyone who is currently diminishing their work, because they are women without Ph.D.s, comes to recognize that these projects would not exist without these women and their passion, skills, knowledge, and hard work.