Dissertation Defence: Understanding the Role of Spinal Cord Injury Community-Based Organizations in Research Partnerships
July 11 at 10:30 am - 2:30 pm
Emily Giroux, supervised by Dr. Heather L. Gainforth, will defend their dissertation titled “Understanding the Role of Spinal Cord Injury Community-Based Organizations in Research Partnerships” in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Kinesiology.
An abstract for Emily Giroux’s dissertation is included below.
Examinations are open to all members of the campus community as well as the general public. Registration is not required for in-person exams.
Abstract
Spinal cord injury (SCI) community-based organizations (CBOs) offer programs and services to promote quality of life and meaningful inclusion of people living with SCI. To receive program funds, SCI CBOs are increasingly being asked to demonstrate the evidence-based nature and impact of their programs. To ensure that SCI CBO staff are accessing and using relevant research evidence, there are calls for SCI research to be conducted in partnerships that meaningfully engage and include SCI CBO representatives in the research process. However, coproduction approaches can pose challenges for meaningful engagement, exacerbating issues of tokenism, and irrelevant and unusable research. To combat these issues, the Integrated Knowledge Translation (IKT) Guiding Principles were co-developed for SCI researchers, research users, and funders to use early and throughout the research process. These Principles can only support the conduct of meaningful research partnerships if they are used. To support SCI CBOs to adopt and enact the IKT Guiding Principles, a deeper understanding of research partnerships within the context of SCI CBOs is needed.
Conducted in partnership with the IKT Guiding Principles Partnership, this dissertation aimed to deeply explore the role of SCI CBOs as research partners. Study 1 used environmental scan methods to identify Canadian and American SCI CBOs that offer programs to peoples living with SCI, and characterize their organizational contexts, and research use and partnership practices. Guided by the RE-AIM Framework, Study 2 examined the impact of an online training created by an SCI CBO to build capacity for meaningful SCI research partnerships. Finally, Study 3 used narrative inquiry to deeply understand context-sensitive stories of research partnerships from the perspectives of SCI CBO representatives and provide examples of strategies employed in positive and challenging SCI research partnerships.
Theoretically, this dissertation contributes to a coherent and cumulative science of research partnership by providing a multi-level characterization of SCI CBO context, and an initial contextualization of research partnership practices, strategies, outcomes, and impacts. This theoretical foundation, combined with the development of pragmatic capacity-building tools can support SCI CBOs to co-produce research that is relevant, useful, and usable for their clients.
