Developing Productive and Meaningful Collaborative Research Partnerships Within and Outside of Your Institution

By Katie Maki, University of Florida, and Bryn Harris, University of Colorado Denver

For many of us, graduate school was filled with ups and downs – there was the excitement of learning and being engaged in content and ideas about which we were extremely interested and passionate. There was also the hard work, long hours, and days when it seemed like we would never get to the real world of faculty positions. (Rumor has it there may have been times when some referred to the PhD as a “Pretty horrible Decision.”) But, perseverance paid off; you graduated! Now what? 

On my (KM) first day in my first academic job, I was welcomed – I was handed my office keys and shown around, but no one told me how I should actually do my job, especially my research. As an early career scholar, you often have the flexibility to engage in the work you want to do and about which you really care. But, how do you decide where to start? Although scholarship expectations vary across different types of faculty roles and universities, you will likely be expected to engage in some form of scholarship in your position, and it is up to you to determine what and how you do it. Whatever approach to your research you take, don’t try to do it all on your own.

In graduate school, partnerships are often already established and integrated into your research projects but as an early career scholar, you likely will also establish new research partnerships. Most commonly, graduate students are collaborating on research with their advisor and/or mentor, other graduate students, and other faculty in their university. As a result, during graduate school, partnerships typically develop relatively naturally or are inherent to existing systems (e.g., assistantships, coursework). Thus, for many of us, we have not observed the development of new research partnerships or had specific training in this area. Moreover, as a graduate student, you work within a system of research mentorship and support between advisors and students so when graduate students experience difficulties with research, they have other researchers with whom to problem-solve or seek support. As an early career scholar, you need to develop independence in your research. That is, early career scholars often need to demonstrate that they are engaged in their own work. But don’t think of independence as isolation in research. Independence in research includes collaborative research. To develop and maintain a productive, meaningful, and sustainable research agenda, establishing meaningful research partnerships is key.

New Partnerships within A New Institution

As you embark on your new position as an early career scholar, you will likely have opportunities for research at your new institution. There may be colleagues in your program or department who engage in similar or related work with whom you could partner on a project. However, don’t limit yourself to collaborating with faculty in your program or department. There may be researchers within your college or across the university who would be great research collaborators. In fact, collaborating with faculty in other academic departments often brings a unique and different perspective to your work that can enhance your thinking and the project.

When starting at your new institution, take a proactive approach to finding new research partners.

1. Ask colleagues in your program or department if they know anyone in your college or university who engages in work related to yours. Chances are, they will think of someone, and often, multiple people. Depending on your colleague’s relationship with the other faculty member, you may ask them to reach out to the faculty member to connect the two of you.
2. Search faculty profiles in your department, college, and university. Read about their work, and read the work, in which faculty at your university are engaged to explore whose work might complement yours.
3. Reach out to colleagues. Ask them to get coffee or meet to discuss research. Share with your new colleague about the kind of research in which you engage and where you see connections between your work and their work.
4. Look for research networking opportunities at your university. Some universities host events about research topics, funding opportunities, etc. that could provide opportunities to connect with other researchers at your university.
5. Some universities create research profiles for faculty that can be searched in various ways. For example, at my university (BH), early career scholars can request searches through the Office of Research Services for faculty within the institution that have been awarded certain types of grants or by research topic area.
6. Keep in mind that overlapping areas of research isn’t always enough for a successful research partnership. It’s also important that you will be able to effectively (and enjoyably) work with your new colleague.
7. Be judicious in developing research partnerships and don’t feel the pressure to say yes to every opportunity to collaborate that comes your way. Be proactive to push your research agenda forward, but in the way that best serves you.

Although these suggestions may sound intimidating, we have found that researchers are generally open to talking with colleagues about research, particularly early career scholars. As an example, I, (KM) wanted to apply for an internal competitive university grant that required a multidisciplinary team. To identify potential colleagues for the project, I asked colleagues in my program if they knew anyone focused on my project’s variables of interest. After identifying a colleague within my college, I sent him an email (never having met him before), asking him if he’d be willing to meet to talk about my idea for the grant. He responded quickly with an enthusiastic yes and later signed on to the grant. The grant was funded, we collected initial data, and we submitted a proposal to the National Science Foundation. These positive outcomes, and moreover, my new enjoyable collaboration, were well worth the very momentary slight awkwardness of sending a cold email to a new colleague.

Research Partnerships Across Institutions

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, our use of Zoom and other virtual technologies has greatly increased, inspiring cultural changes in higher education that have facilitated easier collaboration across institutions. At the same time, during the pandemic, academics have likely attended fewer in-person conferences and networking events, reducing the opportunity to promote such collaborations. Initiation and successful collaboration with scholars across institutions requires intentionality, follow-through, and collaborative purpose. 

Sargent and Waters (2004) further described successful collaboration across institutions as needing two main components: context and interpersonal collaborative processes. Context refers to the resources, environment, support, and climate while interpersonal collaborative processes refers to communication, trust, and attraction among collaborators. It is important to critically reflect on these components prior to engaging in research partnerships. For example, early career scholars may interpret a strong potential research partner as a colleague with similar research aims while mutual content expertise is one aspect to consider from a wider scope of potential needs. Sargent and Waters (2004) further expanded on the needs for cross-institution collaborations as having three dimensions: (1) objective outcomes (e.g. publications, presentations), (2) subjective outcomes (satisfaction with the collaborative relationship, enhanced self-confidence), and (3) learning from the other collaborators. Early career scholars can seek out and evaluate cross-institution collaborations for these components.

Multiple methods can be employed to initiate cross-institution collaborations. For example, when reading an article of interest, you may consider contacting the author to express your appreciation of their work or pose questions about aspects of the research. Depending on the interaction, you may consider asking them to collaborate in various ways (e.g., meet about a particular challenge where they may have expertise, collaborate on a presentation, propose a more substantial collaborative research project). Early career scholars can also network at conferences in an effort to develop collaboration across institutions. For example, you may consider emailing a potential collaborator to ask them if they can meet following a presentation to discuss a particular topic. It is always helpful for a potential collaborator to know that you are an early career scholar and are seeking particular types of mentorship or collaboration. One of my most successful international collaborations (BH) started with an email from a colleague about a recent article I published. This communication resulted in various collaborative research projects, and most importantly, the work is highly meaningful to both of us.

It is important to note that there are multiple other collaborations that can be pursued (e.g., agencies and organizations, community and school partnerships, professional associations,

foundations), yet are not the focus of this post. If you’re interested in learning more about developing research partnerships with schools and community organizations, read ECF’s post from May 2022.

Final Considerations

One of the most common reasons why collaborative research partners may not be successful is a lack of common understanding regarding the roles and responsibilities of the team. The team should be grounded in an understanding of the motivations for being part of a collaborative effort, the nature and type of the research project, the roles of the individuals, and an evaluation of the collaborative outcomes following the conclusion of the task (Sargent and Waters, 2002). Strong collaborative relationships across institutions must be built on communication and clarity – where all members understand authorship responsibilities. It is possible that the original plans for the research project are not effective, and the team needs to revisit them to improve success. It is also common and should be normalized that collaborative research partnerships across institutions are not always effective. Although early career scholars may interpret these as failed relationships, we encourage you to reframe these experiences as guiding you towards more successful collaborative research experiences in the future.

What has led you to develop strong research partnerships? What advice would you provide to fellow early career scholars?

Ten Tips for Developing an Edited Book

By Sally L. Grapin, Montclair State University

Developing an edited book can be a valuable activity for school psychology scholars and their field at large. Unlike authored books, edited books represent the voices and contributions of multiple authors. One advantage to edited books is that they allow editors to connect with authors outside of their established networks, which can be a valuable activity for early career scholars. Additionally, early career scholars might consider developing an edited book when they feel a topic is best addressed from multiple perspectives or when they wish to feature expert voices in areas related to but somewhat beyond the scope of their own work (e.g., a scholar with a particular focus on antiracism seeks to develop an edited book on social justice more broadly). Like many other forms of scholarship, edited books are one way in which scholars can support the advancement of their field and fill in knowledge and resource gaps for practitioners, researchers, and others. 

At the same time, edited books are a tremendous undertaking, and coordinating submissions from multiple author teams can present challenges for producing a cohesive product. The following describes ten tips for early career scholars seeking to develop an edited book.

1. Identify a publisher that is a good fit for your project.

Numerous academic publishers are interested in recruiting school psychology book projects. Whereas some publishers may focus primarily on books for higher education students or practitioners (e.g., many trade publishers), others may focus on books for scholars and researchers (e.g., many academic publishers). Examining recent titles from the publisher and talking with editorial staff (e.g., at conference exhibit halls) may help you identify a publisher that is a good fit for your project. Moreover, some publishers produce book series edited by school psychology scholars; talking with these series editors may be helpful for finding a home for your book. Before signing a contract, you might consider asking publishers (and authors who have worked with these publishers) questions such as:

• How long are authors typically given to develop the book?
• How will the book be marketed?
• Who will prepare the index? Who will be expected to secure and pay for permissions?
• What are the criteria for determining if a second edition is warranted?

Once you have identified a publisher and are ready to sign a contract, be sure to read the contract carefully and ensure that the timelines specified (e.g., due dates) are feasible for you.

2. Carefully consider and clearly identify your audience.

Many books for school psychologists may also be appropriate for other audiences. Because school psychology scholars, practitioners, and/or graduate students constitute a relatively small potential audience, you might consider targeting your book toward a broader range of school-based professionals, mental health providers, students, and/or caregivers. Books that have a wider audience may ultimately be more attractive to prospective publishers.

3. Use the book proposal as an opportunity for in-depth planning.

Publishers will typically request a formal proposal for your book project. While the structure and requirements of these proposals may vary, areas you may be asked to address include: (a) the book’s intended audience; (b) rationale or need for the book; (c) potential competitors; and (d) detailed table of contents with brief chapter summaries. If you are developing a book that could be used in an undergraduate or graduate classroom, you may be asked to specify relevant courses. Often, the questions posed in these proposals will prompt you to think carefully about the content and unique features of your book. Spending time on this proposal at the outset may ultimately benefit you in the long run.

4. Set realistic timelines for your contributing authors and yourself.

Edited books can take a long time to develop (often a full year or more), in part because they involve coordinating multiple rounds of chapter submissions across multiple author teams. Inevitably, authors will experience delays due to work or personal commitments. Being understanding of these circumstances is important, especially given that authors are taking the time to support your work. To minimize potential delays, give authors adequate time to develop and revise their chapters, accounting for summer and holiday breaks as well as particularly busy times of the year (e.g., beginning or end of the semester). More time should be given for initial chapter submissions, whereas timeframes for revision may be somewhat shorter. You might consider staggering due dates for chapters such that you can edit submissions at a steady pace rather than reviewing them all at once.

If you are planning to invite a foreword author, consider securing a commitment from that individual early on. Be sure to let them know when they can expect to review the final (or near final) draft of the book and when their contribution would be due, as there is often a shorter window for preparing a foreword than a chapter.

5. Carefully consider who you will invite to author chapters.

The strength of an edited book relies not only on the work of its editor(s) but also on the ideas, perspectives, and follow-through of its authors. Think carefully about whose voices and perspectives will be represented in the book. For example, editors hoping to cultivate a strong social justice orientation in their work should consider how they will center the voices of scholars and communities with marginalized identities. In addition to considering the lenses, expertise, and perspectives of authors, editors should recruit contributors with strong writing skills and a history of completing projects in a diligent and timely manner. Being thoughtful in recruiting author teams can make for a smoother editing process later on.

6. Provide clear writing guidelines for authors before they begin writing.

Providing clear and detailed guidelines for chapter submissions can be especially helpful for ensuring a cohesive final product. These guidelines should be provided to authors before they begin writing and may include information related to: (a) section headers (e.g., chapter objectives, introduction, recommendations for practice, summary/conclusion); (b) chapter length; (c) guidelines for references; (d) style/formatting (e.g., APA style or other formatting requirements provided by the publisher); and (e) major issues or topics for the author(s) to address (or not address) so as to avoid redundancies or major gaps in content. The more information you provide up front, the less time you will need to spend editing individual chapters for cohesion. Moreover, providing a sample chapter can be especially helpful (perhaps one of your own that you can complete ahead of inviting submissions).

Consider asking experienced book editors about the guidelines they provided to their contributing authors. Sample emails and guideline documents can be helpful in constructing your own, especially if you have the opportunity to see examples from multiple editors.

7. Provide feedback to authors that is constructive but not overly prescriptive.

Providing clear feedback is essential for supporting authors in revising their chapters as well as ensuring timely resubmission. Where appropriate, be as specific as possible about the revisions you hope to see. However, at the same time, respect authors’ decisions about how and where to make edits to their work. One significant advantage of edited books is that they bring together the perspectives and expertise of multiple author teams; as a corollary, it is important to respect authors’ autonomy in deciding which content should and should not be included. Navigating this balance can be difficult, but it may be helpful for you to: (a) clearly distinguish high-priority from low-priority recommendations for revision; (b) give authors the opportunity to indicate which edits they feel are appropriate or inappropriate; and (c) have real time conversations with authors about edits if disagreements arise (rather than going back and forth on email).

8. Implement and maintain a system of organization.

Staying organized is essential for managing chapter submissions, especially when those submissions are at different stages of the writing and/or editing process. Implementing a system of organization early on can be helpful for reducing stress associated with the editing process. For example, you might consider maintaining a Google spreadsheet with chapter titles, author names, due dates, notes about the status of each chapter, and “to do'' items. You might also find it helpful to maintain an inbox folder designated specifically for book-related correspondence so that you can easily retrieve email threads when needed. Whatever organization system you decide on, stick with it throughout the project (even if you think you are likely to remember details without recording them).

9. Work efficiently.

The work for an edited book project often ebbs and flows. There may be times when you are waiting on submissions and have little to do followed by bursts of intense editing. As noted previously, staggering submission due dates can help distribute editing responsibilities across the project timeline; however, there will likely still be lags in your workload from time to time. Be strategic about how you utilize these lags. For example, when waiting on initial chapter submissions or revisions, consider working on other components of the book, such as the acknowledgements, editor bios, preface, dedication, or glossary. Although these may seem like relatively minor tasks, they can be time-consuming, and getting them out of the way as early as possible can be helpful.

10. Don’t underestimate the time commitment of an edited book and pace yourself.

Given that edited books often rely heavily on the contributions of invited authors, it can be easy to underestimate the amount of time, energy, and work that goes into developing them. Before deciding to pursue an edited book project, consider discussing the time commitment with experienced editors. Moreover, recognize that committing to an edited book may leave you less time to work on other projects (e.g., peer-reviewed journal articles). Before undertaking an edited book, consider whether the project is aligned with your professional objectives. If you are a pre-tenure faculty member or are seeking promotion at an academic institution, you might consider discussing with your department chair or dean whether edited books will be valued in the tenure or promotion review process. Finally, remember that book projects are a marathon, not a sprint! Pacing and self-care throughout the process are critical.

Overall, developing an edited book can be an arduous yet rewarding process. What other suggestions do you have for early career scholars who are considering developing an edited book? Comment below.

Setting Boundaries to Promote Your Research Productivity

By June L. Preast, PhD, NCSP, University of Alabama

Within traditional academic positions, our jobs are divided upon research, service, and teaching. The division of responsibilities across those commitments typically varies across different institutions and roles. For example, more research-intensive institutions may have a workload of .4 FTE for research, .4 FTE for teaching, and .2 FTE for service. Alternatively, institutions with more of a focus on teaching may require .60 FTE for teaching, .20 FTE for research, and .20 for service. Faculty, especially early career scholars, often have a lot of flexibility in how they spend their time in a given time period, which has many advantages. We often get to devote our time, focus, and energy to the activities and experiences about which we are most invested. 

However, there are also challenges that come with the flexibility of an academic career due to the abundance of unplanned opportunities that can crop up and assumption of self-management. Plus, many of us are taken by surprise--sometimes frequently--by the sheer volume of expected requests and opportunities that can come up, from staffing crises to calls for proposals to student needs or grading and advising needs that far outstrip allocated FTE. Quite simply, there is never a shortage of work, new opportunities, or time-sensitive demands. Scholars typically must be disciplined, thoughtful, organized, and self-protective to ensure they are able to fulfill their various responsibilities. Doing so, especially as an early career scholar, can be daunting because it requires setting and holding boundaries in a context where demands for your time can seem never ending.

Boundaries can be referred to as how we let others know our needs. And holding those boundaries are important to ensure that we are meeting our own needs. It’s important to keep in mind individual faculty may have different experiences in setting and holding boundaries in comparison to their colleagues. Women faculty are often expected to provide more time on service and teaching obligations, are often approached more often by students for support, and subsequently have less time to devote to research endeavors and their counterparts identifying as men. Faculty of color, especially women faculty of color, experience even more inequity, adding the sometimes hidden additional requirements for achieving tenure and promotion. LGBTQIA+ faculty and faculty of color are also tasked with creating and maintaining safe spaces for community for students. And women faculty often have significant caregiving responsibilities outside of work that limit their ability to continue working on tasks beyond the typical work day. The structure of higher education is designed to get as much as they can out of you before you say no. And with that, the structure easily takes advantage of faculty, especially women, faculty of color, and LGBTQIA+ faculty.

Often, teaching and service have set deadlines (i.e., class times, meetings) and involve working with others or for others. For teaching, you know you have to be prepared for the set class meeting times, grades have to be submitted by a certain date, and students are asking questions that need to be answered related to specific assignments or topics. For service, you usually know when the meetings will be, when your tasks are due, and have other people holding you accountable. But research is self-driven, with deadlines you set yourself or with research partners. Although there are times when you may have others holding you accountable for research, that may not always be the case. And your research agenda is just that, yours, and yours alone. It’s up to you to accomplish your goals related to research. And it can be easy to let the teaching and service needs take over the time you set aside for research simply because of the perceived obligation to others. This blog post aims to provide some strategies for preserving research time in the midst of other responsibilities. 

Strategy 1: Align your time with your job expectations. 

Research suggests that faculty time is often poorly aligned with job expectations. For early career scholars, developing effective habits for time use can be critical for avoiding over-extending yourself or failing to meet basic job role expectations (e.g., publishing). As much as possible, strive to align how you spend your time with how you’re expected to spend your time. This will often require a combination of proactive calendaring, self-monitoring, adjustment, and the strategies above. For early career scholars for whom research is a primary expectation for employment, promotion, or tenure, the ongoing process of scheduling, protecting, and fulfilling research time is especially important. This will likely necessitate firm limits on how much time is available for other responsibilities or endeavors. For example, you may cap the amount of time you can spend on course prep or grading each week, which will likely require use of strategies for efficient feedback.

Strategy 2: Set aside time each day to touch research. 

It’s important to make time in your schedule dedicated to research. Treat it like you would an important meeting or class period, limiting distractions for that scheduled time. If you struggle with carving out large chunks of time, one idea is scheduling 30 minutes each day to make any sort of forward progress towards research. Committing to smaller amounts of time throughout the week may be more beneficial than setting aside say all of Friday, especially as the needs of earlier in the week may overflow into your research time at the end of the week. Or if you prefer larger chunks of time, try to make sure to schedule those earlier in the week before other work responsibilities are able to get in the way. Regardless, make a point to cut distractions as much as you can during your research time and make note of all that you accomplish, even if it feels small. Avoiding distractions may mean ignoring email during writing time, limiting apps or internet access, or working where others are unlikely to disrupt your time.

Strategy 3: Schedule times in your day to answer emails. 

Very rarely are there emergencies in academia, so it’s okay to not answer all emails immediately after receiving them. Give yourself some time each day to answer emails, but only during that time each day. If it’s too hard to do all emails that way, consider setting aside time just for student emails. You can also use email templates to streamline your email time by preparing standard responses as the basis for common inquiries. These can include templates for graciously declining an opportunity that is a poor fit for your goals, role, or availability.

Strategy 4: Start saying no to opportunities that don’t align with your research and professional goals

The ECF has repeatedly addressed the importance of saying no to opportunities that aren’t aligned with your goals and interests because the tendency to say yes to every opportunity can derail goals and contribute to exhaustion and burnout. As an early career scholar, it may feel hard or seem mean saying no to committees or opportunities. But if those opportunities don’t align with your research and professional goals, it's okay to say no, especially if you are already meeting the expectations for service for your institution. You may feel better about saying no by visibly and frequently reminding yourself of your goals and role expectations. Write out your research and professional goal(s) and keep it either on your laptop, desktop, or maybe as a post-it note. Look back at your goal(s) when presented with an opportunity and ask yourself if it aligns. If you find it difficult to say no, text a couple friends (especially fellow academics) who are willing to provide guidance. Our previously mentioned post provides additional suggestions for how to navigate this tricky process.

Strategy 5: Resist the urge to fix to every student issue

Student issues (or situations that students perceive as issues) are inevitable. And when students come to you upset and in need of support, it can be easy to instantly want to help and find solutions for them. However, be sure to take the time to understand the issue before saying yes and jumping into the problem-solver role. Not all student issues are ours to solve. Feel free to ask colleagues for guidance. Consider directing students to other resources or personnel who are better positioned to support their needs. Where infrastructure is lacking, it might be helpful to work with colleagues to build out procedures or resources so that you’re not always in reactive mode every time a concern emerges.  

For most (if not all) of us, research is enjoyable and the questions we strive to answer drive us and our work. However, our various work responsibilities sometimes take away the time we plan or hope to spend on research. Prioritizing research is possible with a little planning and strategizing. Hopefully you find something helpful in our suggestions. What other suggestions do you have for effectively setting boundaries to support your research?

Developing Research Partnerships as an Early Career Scholar

By Kathrin Maki, Assistant Professor, University of FloridaDeveloping research partnerships with schools, communities, and other organizations can be an exciting yet challenging endeavor, particularly for early career scholars. Most often, academic positions require moving to a new community, often away from professional and social networks, thus requiring scholars to develop new relationships with community organizations to engage in their work. We asked three scholars engaging in research in schools and communities to discuss how they approach, expand, and sustain their research partnerships.Lisa N. Aguilar is an assistant professor in the School Psychology Program at Indiana University. Dr. Aguilar’s work centers Indigenous youth, families, and communities with the aim to Indigenize and decolonize educational spaces.Katie Eklund is an associate professor and co-director of the school psychology program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research focuses on school mental health, including early detection and intervention for children who have behavioral and social-emotional concerns, culturally-responsive mental health interventions, social emotional learning, and school safety.Stacy-Ann January is an assistant professor in the school psychology program at the University of South Florida. Her research primarily focuses on data-based decision making and academic interventions in school settings.What big picture ideas do you think early career scholars should keep in mind when establishing research partnerships?Lisa: Early career scholars should ask themselves: How will I sustain this relationship in a meaningful way? Partnerships should be developed with the intention that the relationship between the researcher and the organization will be ongoing and reciprocal. This advice is targeted toward those of us who do research with marginalized communities or schools that have a high population of marginalized students. I don’t believe that a relationship can be meaningful if it is not sustained through reciprocal action. We are simply contributing to the problem that researchers have created of entering a community, taking what they need, leaving, and not giving anything back to the community if we don’t plan for HOW we will engage and WHY we want to engage. If you enter a partnership solely for the benefit of what it will bring you as a researcher, then it is important to be transparent about that with the organization. I don’t doubt that some organizations will be okay with that but there are also organizations that would not be.Katie: Before establishing a research partnership, it is important to discern if you are hoping to engage in a fully-formed research-practice partnership or if this is more of a traditional research relationship where you are seeking to gather data from a local school district for a particular project. There is a clear difference between the two. Research-practice partnerships (RPPs) are defined as “a long-term, mutualistic collaboration between practitioners and researchers that are intentionally organized to investigate problems of practice and solutions for improving district outcomes” (Coburn et al., 2013; p. 2). RPPs represent dedicated, ongoing relationships that often include multiple projects that are beneficial to both partners in the relationship. For example, those working in the schools offer an expertise around problems of practice and can spark new directions for future research. For practitioners, much of their time is already accounted for by their primary job responsibilities and they may not be able to engage in their own research. Partnerships can act as a research branch to this work, supporting valuable, independent, third-party evaluations of practitioner-driven practices.Within an RPP, it is important for the work to be mutually beneficial. In this manner, research questions of practice should be developed jointly between researchers and practitioners. This ensures that they are directly relevant to practitioners and increases the likelihood that research will get used in practice. Engaging in RPPs is also an excellent way for researchers to stay attuned to what is happening within the larger world of education and certainly within the field of school psychology.Stacy-Ann: Think about and decide what your framework for research partnerships will be. The things that you value will inform how you approach partnerships. It is also important to think of the organizations with which you’re attempting to engage. Consider the extent to which you have shared values and goals. Engage in work to understand your biases and how you can promote equity and social justice in your research partnerships.I’ll also say that knowing that building research partnerships takes time and there will be bumps along the way. It also helps to be persistent, to reflect on how it’s going, and adjust as necessary.What specific actions or activities have you engaged in to form successful research relationships with schools or other organizations?Lisa: First, be present. Attend organizational events, get to know people, volunteer, put away your agenda, and engage with the organization and its people as a person. Being present and volunteering your time addresses the idea of reciprocity. This is particularly important when developing relationships with Tribal schools. Indigenous communities have been mined for data for centuries. We must think differently about how to be in relation with communities that have been harmed by research practices. So, a large part of this must be you showing how you can be of service to the organization. Why should they allow you into their space? What benefit do you bring to the community? Second, assess the needs of the community. This is something that I plan to do when I switch institutions to get to know the Indigenous communities near my new institution. However, this is not just a survey that I will send out via email. This needs assessment will take place in a community space, with food and childcare provided through research funds. I plan to introduce myself, my positionality, and the research that I am passionate about. I will invite children, adults, and elders and incorporate culturally relevant pieces like starting with a prayer, smudging, and making an offering to the community members.Katie: When I came to UW-Madison almost four years ago, I was fortunate to be invited to co-direct a newly formed Madison Education Partnership (MEP), an RPP between our campus and Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD). MEP is designed to improve experiences and outcomes for all MMSD students and reduce gaps in opportunity and achievement. It is co-led by three directors; two of us are faculty at UW-Madison and our third director oversees the Research and Innovation Office in MMSD. MEP is designed to intentionally disrupt the power relations between educators and researchers. Our partnership deliberately opens up spaces where educators can center everyday problems that they confront in the classroom, problems to which researchers can apply their scientific and methodological expertise to solve.MEP has provided a wonderful opportunity to build relationships not only with district leaders in our local schools, but to understand problems of practice that are pervasive throughout the system. It has allowed us to connect faculty interested in educational research with building principals or teachers who want to do more to help their kids. The formal relationship between the university and the district has helped to establish trust and to ensure both groups can support one another. It goes much further than researchers simply “pitching” a project that a school may or may not be interested in, but rather centers the larger needs of the district to solve questions of practice.Stacy-Ann: I try to take a multifaceted approach to forming research partnerships and some strategies have been successful. For example, I have asked researchers with extant partnerships to facilitate introductions with key stakeholders. If the researcher has similar and complementary research interests, then it may be possible to collaborate with them on a project that is ongoing/beginning. When the researcher has not had similar interests, I follow up those introductions with offers to meet and discuss the potential for a partnership. Many universities have offices of community engagement. It may be useful to reach out to individuals in those offices to learn more about how they can connect you with organizations in the community that may be interested in a partnership. Finally, I have reached out to schools and districts directly to initiate conversations about a potential partnership. Although not every contact led to a partnership, some have.How have you navigated the hidden or implicit rules and cultures that are often evident in schools and other organizations?Katie: I think it’s important to develop relationships with the individuals who are the closest to the actual work. For example, if you are examining the impact of a social-emotional learning intervention in an early childhood classroom, spend time with the preschool teachers to better understand their classroom norms, personal values, and the challenges they are facing with implementation. Talk more with the director of the early childhood center to understand the systemic supports and barriers to implementation and to gain a deeper understanding the role of the center in the larger community.As I quickly learned as a school psychologist: if you have been in one school, you have been in one school. Just because you successfully implemented a research project in a middle school in one district does not mean that it will be equally successful in its partner school down the road. The culture and climate of each school can make or break even the best laid plans for research. Build relationships not only with the school administrators who are often gatekeepers to your research; spend time learning from children, parents, and those in the larger community about how your research will intertwine or complement their existing practices. And don’t forget that when the project is done to share your findings and determine how it might most be useful to those it is intended to serve.Stacy-Ann: Fortunately, my background as an elementary teacher has helped with this some. But I’ve also asked faculty who have formed research partnerships with schools in that district/area about what hidden rules may exist and how they’ve navigated them. I’ve also found it helps to be open and collaborative while building relationships with educators. As you become immersed into the culture of the school, you may be seen less like an outsider and more like a partner.What barriers have you faced in forming relationships with organizations and how have you overcome them?Katie: Be prepared for individuals to say no to your proposed work. Just because you spend time establishing a working relationship with a local school or district does not mean that they will always say yes to every project that you propose. When describing a new project to a potential partner, I always leave room for them to decline or say no. If the project is not aligned with their core values, mission, or interests, they should not be persuaded to say yes. Better yet, work with your school partners to co-develop research questions that will directly impact problems of practice. This will ensure there is buy-in to the project while increasing the likelihood that your collaborative work will have a direct impact on practice.Stacy-Ann: There are several potential barriers to forming relationships with stakeholders in schools. One of the biggest factors is time. Educators are quite busy with many and sometimes competing demands for their time and energy. That said, people make time for things they value and that they find beneficial. To help mitigate this barrier, I have tried to match schools’ goals with my goals. I also maximize the time with stakeholders, by being organized, responsive, and efficient. Another factor is the possibilities of being viewed as an outsider and/or not being trusted. This could be due to individuals’ or organizations’ history with researchers in this past, as well as structural and systemic issues like racism. I approach partnerships from a strengths-based perspective and with the goal of building mutually beneficial partnerships. I recognize that stakeholders are the experts in what they do and their schools/community. There are many strengths that they have, and those strengths should be prominent in our work together. Also, regardless of what their goals for improvement are, it is not my job to come in and “fix” them, their students, or their caregivers.How do you balance your research agenda and goals with organizational needs? What steps have you taken to ensure your research was mutually beneficial (e.g., pro bono professional development)?Lisa: My research agenda is grounded in my lived experiences as an Indigenous person who has had to navigate predominantly white institutions. I am clear when I describe my research that I am doing research WITH Tribal communities, schools, and peoples and not ON them. Therefore, I do not have to try very hard to find balance between my goals and Tribal goals because they match fairly well. Now when it comes to schools, this has been more difficult because schools are very hesitant to engage in Indigenization and decolonization efforts. But all that to say I don’t compromise my research agenda to align with a watered down version of what public school administrators and educators would like to see.Katie: Within MEP, our local RPP, every project must be specific to an important problem of practice for our school partner and involves commitment from both district and university experts. In this manner, the project must have (1) buy-in from the district administration, (2) a lead in the district with authority to either make or effectively advocate for changes based on research, and (3) a UW investigator with the expertise and interest necessary to ensure success. This framework ensures that the work may not only help a researcher with a specified project but shows direct benefit to our local schools. Obviously, this framework is used for multiple projects beyond my own research, so I can offer a few thoughts regarding what steps I have personally taken.In my own research, I first try to ensure that the school has a specific need that will be met by a proposed project. For example, they may be interested in a new Tier 2 intervention or want to learn new strategies for progress monitoring for student behavioral concerns. Data gathered from their school may not only answer our research questions, but more importantly help the school in addressing needs of students and educators. Second, if you have funds, talk to the school about how to best support the participants in your studies. Some schools will allow you to pay teachers directly while others have rules about only allowing payments to schools or to teachers outside contract time. Identifying these needs early on in the project can help ensure individuals are adequately compensated for their time.Stacy-Ann: I am always up front about the goal of having a mutually beneficial partnership. I talk about these during my initial and ongoing contacts/meetings with relevant stakeholders. This helps to set the stage early in the partnership. In my initial meetings with school partners, I try to learn as much as I can about their needs and offer pro bono professional development aligned with my expertise around these needs. This has sometimes happened before the school participated in any research project. For me that’s okay, because my aim is to build long-term partnerships. I tend to lean on the side of giving more, for better or worse. When I have had research projects in mind that are consistent with the school’s goals and I have built a relationship with them, then I talk with them about the project. I also try to have discussions about their topics of interest that are consistent with my expertise. We have these discussions with the goal that together we can develop ideas for studies.What actions have you taken to successfully recruit participants? How have you gained administrator, teacher, and other leaders’ buy-in to conduct your research?Lisa: Pay them! I believe it is super important to pay research participants or create ways that they can get some other material benefit. Can the student get high school credit for participating in a yearlong project? Can they get extra credit for a shorter project? Can we pay them a small stipend? Provide food? Tangible benefits are one successful way to recruit participants and I also think the methodology used is important. For example, I am beginning to explore Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) methodology, and I anticipate that lots of students will want to engage in this type of research because it centers their voices and experiences in a way that mainstream public schools don’t.Katie: We have a small group of school psychology faculty at UW-Madison who meet monthly with district school mental health leaders from our local school district. This ongoing partnership has been wonderful in terms of developing trust, rapport, and a better understanding of each group’s priorities. We really just spent time learning more about one another for the first 6-9 months that we met. This included better understanding the roles and functions of school psychologists, social workers, and counselors in the district, as well as our current and future plans for research as faculty. This time together established a wonderful foundational relationship for exploring future research projects together.Our partnership is now in its third year, and I consistently look forward to our monthly time together. Our relationship has been critical to understanding when research projects may or may not be a good fit within the district. The central district team is able to suggest schools who might be interested in particular projects and to help introduce us to building principals or school mental health principals who might be interested in our work. When we have this “warm hand off” and introduction to potential participants, it goes a long way in quickly establishing trust and allowing us to better meet the needs of the school.Stacy-Ann: I usually gain administrator buy-in for the project first. Strong relationships with administrators have been key to any project that I have led in schools. It is also important that the project aligns with topics of interest to them as well. I have had success with projects that have a clear and direct benefit to the school. Ideally, not just for the students who participate, but potentially other students as well. Another factors that has helped is having research with minimal involvement from teachers or administrators at the school. Educators have so much on their plate, I try not to add any more.Once I have administrator buy-in, I meet with teachers about the project. Some of the same reasons why administrators become interested in the project are the ones that draw in teachers. They especially appreciate projects that don’t ask them to do much and that don’t disrupt their schedules. As a result, I’ve conducted research outside of core instructional time (e.g., before school) and during intervention blocks (when conducting intervention studies). I have successfully been able to have teachers help recruit participants by sending informed consent forms home with students who may meet eligibility criteria for the study.How have you navigated the challenges associated with conducting research in applied settings during COVID?Lisa: I have actively chosen not to conduct research in applied settings during the pandemic. Communities like mine have been hit HARD and I didn’t think it was right to ask more of them so that my research agenda could benefit. Instead, I have focused on other papers like theoretical papers, commentaries, meta-analyses, etc.Katie: I have tried to provide grace and space for myself, my colleagues, our students, and our school teams around engaging in research during the pandemic. My larger school community (where most of my research was taking place) was fully virtual from March 2020 until May 2021. Unless we had projects where it made sense to pivot to a virtual platform (only one of our projects fit this description), active data collection on the remaining projects were placed on hold. It was more important to our team to be respectful of the challenges associated with virtual learning during the pandemic, than to push forward research projects with impending deadlines. Thankfully, my academic home has offered support for that to happen, and no-cost extensions were granted by many funding agencies.As a research team, we worked to evaluate how extant data could address our new and existing research questions. This led to a few unexpected manuscripts and projects that might not have happened otherwise. Our team was also able to spend more time evaluating qualitative data we had gathered from stakeholder focus groups for a new intervention we were evaluating, and quickly learned that this work was actually thriving during the pandemic. Many educators and parents had more time to participate in a virtual focus group during the first year of the pandemic than they may have otherwise.What approaches have worked well for you for engaging in research partnerships? Comment below.

Addressing White Privilege in School Psychology Research

By Sally Grapin, Associate Professor, Montclair State University & Lindsay Fallon, Associate Professor, University of Massachusetts BostonRacial privilege and oppression impact not only practice but also research activities in school psychology. In research contexts, white privilege can be defined as unearned advantages (e.g., social, professional, economic, and other benefits) conferred on white* scholars, as well as on white communities impacted by their work, by virtue of institutional and structural racism (adapted from Sue, 2006). Since the earliest years of the field’s development, a number of school psychology scholars (often scholars of color) have illustrated the many ways in which racial privilege and oppression impact research and practice (e.g., Graves, 2009). Nonetheless, these violent dynamics continue to permeate research activities in ways that harm scholars, practitioners, children, families, and communities of color alike.Building on the work of researchers both within and outside of school psychology, we (the authors of this blog post) published an article in March 2022 on dismantling white privilege in school psychology research (Grapin & Fallon, 2022). Drawing from Mintrom (2008), our article described white privilege as permeating four stages of the research process: (a) inputs; (b) transformations; (c) outputs; and (d) applications to practice (all of which are defined below). We also offered a number of examples of white privilege in school psychology research. For example, white school psychology researchers can:

• be assured that ethics review boards will uphold standards that protect the well-being of their racial group;
• remain oblivious to research methodologies and paradigms that do not reflect the values of their racial group with minimal to no penalty for doing so; and
• be assured that they will not be asked to justify the relevance or generalizability of interventions developed to support youth and families who share their racial background (Grapin & Fallon, 2022).

As a follow-up to this article, we hope to further encourage school psychology scholars—particularly white researchers and practitioners—to consider the ways in which white privilege impacts the execution and application of research in school psychology. To this end, we have developed a number of reflection questions for scholars to consider as a guide for engaging in this work. We also provide recommended resources and readings for further study. While these prompts and resources reflect only a small range of issues and resources around this topic, we hope they will be helpful for facilitating further dialogue and action. Research InputsDefinition: Resources, including financial, personnel, and other types, that support the initiation of research (Mintrom, 2008) 

• Have I taken steps to educate myself about the history of racism in psychological research? Can I articulate the ways in which legacies of racial privilege and oppression continue to manifest in contemporary research activities (especially within the field of school psychology)?
• Have I considered the ways in which institutional review boards (IRBs) may prioritize ethical standards consistent with the values of my racial group while decentering ethical principles of others? Have I considered seeking additional approvals from community-based IRBs?
• Have I considered how racism may potentially impact dynamics within and among research team members and community partners? How will (or have) I contribute(d) to the disruption of oppressive dynamics?

TransformationsDefinition: Processes by which research inputs are utilized and translated into outputs using field or discipline-specific practices (Mintrom, 2008)

• Have I considered the ways in which the research paradigms I am utilizing may reinforce the worldviews and biases of my racial group? Have I considered other paradigms that challenge my racial worldviews?
• Have I considered the ways in which existing research in my area of study reinforces norms of whiteness? Is my approach to research design, methodology, etc. replicating these oppressive dynamics?  
• Does my research testify to the experiences and perspectives of racial groups other than my own? Does it assume an ecological/systems approach to conceptualizing and addressing racism?

Research OutputsDefinition: Proximal outcomes and byproducts of the research process (e.g., journal articles, technical reports, augmentation of researcher’s influence or reputation; Mintrom, 2008)

• Am I submitting my work to journals whose editorial boards reflect racial backgrounds other than my own? Are these journals making intentional efforts to center a diverse range of voices, perspectives, and epistemologies?
• Am I submitting my work to journals that will interrogate the explicit and implicit assumptions of my work?
• Am I ensuring that my work is accessible to a wide range of audiences outside of academia (particularly individuals, groups, and communities that will be directly and/or indirectly influenced by my work)?

Applications of Research to PracticeDefinition: Translation of research to service delivery or applied practice (Mintrom, 2008)

• Am I monitoring the ways in which my research is being translated and/or applied in practice? Is it being used in ways that perpetuate racial privilege and harm marginalized populations?
• Have I presumed applications of my work to be “race-neutral,” despite their reinforcing whiteness as normative?
• If I find that my work has contributed to the reinforcement of racial privilege and oppression (albeit inadvertently or unintentionally), have I actively named, held myself accountable for, and taken measures to deconstruct this harm? How will I ensure that my future research efforts (and the efforts of my collaborators and others) DO NOT replicate these harms?

Enacting an anti-racist approach to producing, disseminating, and applying research will inevitably require school psychologists to proactively disrupt violent assumptions and practices that marginalize the voices of historically minoritized populations. Beyond reading and reflection, we emphasize the importance of taking decisive action to disrupt dynamics of privilege and oppression in research activities. We welcome feedback on this topic as well as comments about the many ways in which early career researchers and their collaborators can tackle (or are already tackling) these issues.What other prompts, processes, or resources can you share to help address white privilege in school psychology research?Note: * We intentionally use lowercase style for the term “white,” as uppercase style is traditionally favored by white supremacist groups. It also reinforces the need to decenter whiteness in academic and other spaces.Recommended Readings and ResourcesBaffoe, M., Asimeng-Boahene, L., & Buster, B. (2014). Their way or no way: “Whiteness” as agent for marginalizing and silencing minority voices in academic research and publication. European Journal of Sustainable Development, 3(1), 13–13. https://doi.org/10.14207/ejsd.2014.v3n1p13Bonilla-Silva, E., & Zuberi, T. (2008). Toward a definition of white logic and white methods. In T. Zuberi & E. Bonilla-Silva (Eds.), White logic, white methods: Racism and methodology (pp. 3–27). Rowman & Littlefield.Fallon, L., Grapin, S. L., Newman, D. L., & Noltemeyer, A. (2022). Promoting equity and social justice in the peer review process: Tips for reviewers. School Psychology International, 43(1), 12-17. https://doi.org/10.1177/01430343211070165Roberts, S. O., Bareket-Shavit, C., Dollins, F. A., Goldie, P. D., & Mortenson, E. (2020). Racial inequality in psychological research: Trends of the past and recommendations for the future. Perspectives on Psychological Science: A Journal of the Association for Psychological Science, 15(6), 1295–1309. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691620927709 Settles, I. H., Warner, L. R., Buchanan, N. T., & Jones, M. K. (2020). Understanding psychology’s resistance to intersectionality theory using a framework of epistemic exclusion and invisibility. Journal of Social Issues, 76(4), 796–813. https://doi.org/10.1111/josi.12403 ReferencesGrapin, S. L., & Fallon, L. (2022). Conceptualizing and dismantling white privilege in school psychology research: An ecological model. School Psychology Review. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/2372966X.2021.1963998Graves, S. L. (2009). Albert Sidney Beckham: The first African American school psychologist. School Psychology International, 30(1), 5–23. https://doi.org/10.1177/0143034308101847.Mintrom, M. (2008). Managing the research function of the university: Pressures and dilemmas. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 30(3), 231–244. https://doi.org/10.1080/13600800802155028Sue, D. W. (2006). The invisible whiteness of being: Whiteness, white supremacy, white privilege, and racism. In M. G. Constantine & D. W. Sue (Eds.), Addressing racism: Facilitating cultural competence in mental health and educational settings (pp. 15–30). John Wiley.

Opportunities to Reconceptualize and Advance Mentoring Practices

By Bryn Harris, PhD, Associate Professor, University of Colorado Denver & Sally Grapin, PhD, Associate Professor, Montclair State UniversityIn their recent article, Grapin et al. (2021) review 16 empirical studies of mentorship in the field of school psychology. In line with previous work (Cobb et al., 2018; Johnson, 2014), the authors define mentorship as “a positive, reciprocal, and proactive relationship in which a less experienced individual receives intentional support (e.g., career and psychosocial support) from a more senior one.” There are multiple empirically supported benefits of mentorship, ranging from guidance on career planning to supports for psychosocial well-being. However, the article also discusses several barriers to mentorship; particularly among individuals with racial, ethnic, sex, and gender minoritized identities.Grapin and colleagues (2021) identify a number of descriptive themes across the school psychology mentoring literature. While more detail can be found in the manuscript, we have summarized selected themes from the article and provided reflection questions to assist with furthering your own mentorship abilities.Access and Availability Key Takeaway: Being accessible (within reason) to your mentees is important for building positive relationships. For mentees, having access to networks of multiple mentors can be beneficial as well.

• In what ways do you demonstrate availability and accessibility with your mentees?
• Are the ways in which you demonstrate this availability clear and consistent among mentees?
• Have you explored and disseminated information about other formal and informal mentorship opportunities?

Structure of MentoringKey Takeaway: Mentees can benefit from both formal and informal mentoring experiences. Mentees may have different preferences and needs, so discussing expectations for the mentoring relationship in advance can be helpful.

• Have you explicitly discussed expectations for the mentoring relationship with your mentees?
• What type of structure do your mentees desire from your mentoring relationship? How can you work with mentees to ensure they have access to the supports they need?

Supporting Mentees with Minoritized IdentitiesKey Takeaway: Mentoring occurs within a variety of larger programmatic, institutional, societal, and cultural contexts. Understanding how dynamics of power, privilege and oppression can shape mentoring processes is essential. Proactively disrupting injustice in the context of mentoring relationships is imperative.

• How might dynamics of social power, privilege, and oppression impact your relationships with your mentees?
• How might aspects of identity such as sex, gender, race, and ethnicity (and their intersections) impact your interactions?
• Are you ensuring that your mentees have access to supportive and affirming learning environments?

Modeling Key Takeaway: Modeling constructive, just, and ethical behavior can support mentees’ personal and professional development. Mentees may look to their mentors to model behaviors they can replicate in their own careers.

• In what ways do you model collaborative research skills?
• In what ways do you model socially just approaches to your professional activities?
• In what ways do you model self-care and work-life balance?

Personal and Psychosocial SupportKey Takeaway: Mentees may value not only professional support but also personal and psychosocial support in mentoring relationships. These types of supports can facilitate strong, positive relationships that empower mentees.

• How are you expressing empathy, care, and warmth to your mentees? Do you express these supports differently among mentees, and if so, how?
• How do you take a personal interest in their lives?
• How do you ensure that you are conveying encouragement instead of discouragement?

Career Exploration and Decision-MakingKey Takeaway: Mentoring relationships can be powerful facilitators of career exploration and decision-making. Ask your mentees about the types of career supports that would be most helpful to them.

• How are you supporting your mentees in experimenting with a wide variety of career roles?
• How are you increasing transparency within areas of career advancement that may be difficult to navigate (e.g., tenure and promotion)?

Collaborative and Reciprocal PartnershipsKey Takeaway: Involve mentees in research and other professional activities in meaningful ways. Providing opportunities for mentees to incorporate or pursue their professional interests through this work may promote engagement.

• Are you providing meaningful opportunities for collaboration with your mentees?
• Are these experiences allowing your mentees to substantively engage with the research process and understand it holistically?

Socialization and NetworkingKey Takeaway: Mentoring can be a valuable outlet for socializing and orienting mentees to the field as well as building professional networks. Provide support for mentees in building their professional networks and connecting with others who share their interests and career goals.

• How are you encouraging the creation of collaborative partnerships among your own mentees within their graduate programs and across various professional networks?
• Are you supporting your mentees in developing and applying networking skills?

What ideas do you have for advancing mentoring relationships? What advice might you give others to improve their own mentorship skills?ReferencesCobb, C., Zamboanga, B., Xie, D., Schwartz, S., Meca, A., & Sanders, G. (2018). From advising to mentoring: Toward proactive mentoring in health service psychology doctoral training programs. Training and Education in Professional Psychology, 12(1), 38–45. https://doi.org/10.1037/tep0000187Grapin, S. L., Collier-Meek, M. A., January, S. A. A., Yang, C., & Portillo, N. L. (2021). Reconceptualizing Mentorship for the 21st Century: A Systematic Mapping of Research in School Psychology. School Psychology Review, 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1080/2372966X.2021.1910861Johnson, W. (2014). Mentoring in psychology education and training: A mentoring relationship continuum model. In W. Johnson & N. Kaslow (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of education and training in clinical psychology (pp. 272–290). Oxford University Press.  

Opportunities for Pivoting Research Part 2: Getting Started with Secondary Research

By Amanda L. Sullivan, University of Minnesota; Ethan Van Norman, Lehigh University; and Ryan Farmer,  Oklahoma State UniversityIn our March 2021 post, Katie Maki and Bryn Harris discussed how scholars whose projects were disrupted by the pandemic can leverage meta-analytic methods to jump start their research programs. In many settings, scholars may experience continued challenges to returning to their past work when school partnerships and processes remain hampered by various effects of the pandemic (e.g., remote schooling, P20 staffing or enrollment challenges, budget challenges, administrator reluctance). With many scholars looking forward to the winding down of a uniquely challenging (and long) academic year, we wanted to take a bird’s eye view and discuss the broader utility of secondary research and provide some resources to help you get started (unless you plan to spend the summer on much needed rest and recuperation which you absolutely should—without guilt). Secondary research includes a broad range of approaches that use existing qualitative or quantitative data in a systematic study. They may be particularly attractive to scholars whose applied projects were derailed by pandemic-related challenges to recruitment, data collection, or community engagement given that secondary approaches rely on data that are already available for use. Potential secondary data sources include public or private documents (e.g., state or federal policy, case law, education or health records, as well as other research as was the focus in the previous post), media (as in bibliographic methods, textual analysis), and extant quantitative datasets (e.g., re-analysis of prior study data or large-scale quantitative data), to name a few. Notably, there’s no one way to do secondary research or specific problems that can be answered through secondary methods. And secondary research needn’t be a solitary activity—it’s highly amenable to team science and community-engaged scholarship. Our goal here is to give you some resources to learn more and potentially get started if secondary methods would be useful to your program of research.Although misconceptions about secondary research are commonplace, secondary researchers follow the typical empirical process of generating and refining research questions or hypotheses, identifying data appropriate for addressing those questions or hypotheses, designing a study to address those questions or hypotheses, gathering and preparing data, and analyzing and interpreting data to offer interpretations and recommendations. The data collection process often involves exploring potential data sources and isolating relevant data from the universe of available options, often before finalizing research questions and hypotheses. These processes generally replace the effort typically involved in selecting or developing study implementation, participant recruitment, and data collection, but may be no less time intensive or important and can certainly offer scholarship as rigorous and consequential as any other approach. The following publications provide a helpful introduction to secondary research approaches:

• Jones, C. (2010). Archival data: Advantages and disadvantages for research in psychology. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 4, 1008-1017. doi:10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00317.x
• Heaton, J. (2004). What is secondary analysis? In Reworking qualitative data. Sage.
• Smith, E. (2008). Pitfalls and promises: The use of secondary data analysis in educational research. British Journal of Educational Studies, 56, 323–339. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8527.2008.00405.x
• Chatfield, S. L. (2020). Recommendations for secondary analysis of qualitative data. The Qualitative Report, 25(3), 833-842.

You may not have a specific question in mind and rushing hypothesis development could lead to false-starts, false-positives (especially in large data sets), and wasted resources. It’s okay not to jump straight to hypothesis testing (Scheel et al., 2020). Exploring secondary data may provide a wealth of information, including better problem definitions, more informed questions, a more complete picture of the relationships between variables, and so on. This may be especially useful at the beginning of a research line, but may still yield fruit for more established scholars. In addition, large-scale quantitative data can be useful in estimating causal effects and can allow for exploration of other research problems and questions not otherwise feasible without massive financial and human resources. Given that early career scholars don’t generally have millions of research dollars and a team of experts, data collectors, coders, and other staff at the ready, secondary quantitative analysis can be a cost efficient way to investigate consequential questions by taking advantage of others’ prior investment in study design, data collection, and database preparation. The following resources are especially useful to aspiring secondary quant researchers.

• Andersen, J. P., Prause, J., & Silver, R. C. (2011). A step-by-step guide to using secondary data for psychological research. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 5(1), 56–75. doi:10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00329.x
• Trzesniewski, K. H., Donnellan, M. B., & Lucas, R. E. (Eds.) (2011). Secondary data analysis: An introduction for psychologists. American Psychological Association.
• Else-Quest, N. M., & Hyde, J. S. (2016). Intersectionality in quantitative psychological research: I. Theoretical and epistemological issues. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 40(2), 155-170.
• Sullivan, A. L., Weeks, M., Kulkarni, T., & Nguyen, T. (2020). Large-scale secondary data analysis—Part 1: For researchers. NASP Communiqué, 48(5), 16-19

Many popular publicly available datasets are already formatted appropriately for cross sectional and longitudinal analyses. In addition to learning the quantitative approach (or collaborating with individuals well versed in the analyses you intend to conduct), it can be wise to familiarize yourself with methods to format or otherwise “clean” quantitative data. This point is especially salient if you are partnering with schools or other community agencies who may not necessarily be mindful of the requirements of data formatting for quantitative analyses. Although different software will have different requirements for data formatting, in general, you can differentiate between “long” format and “wide” format. In the latter each row represents outcomes from one unit of interest (e.g., school, student, etc.), whereas “long” format includes repeated rows from an individual unit. Some analytic approaches (e.g., SEM) often use “wide” data whereas others (e.g., “linear mixed effects regression) use “long” data. It is very likely that you may need to convert raw data from one format to another, such as changing data from wide to long and vice versa (e.g., Reshaping Data in R, Reshaping Data in SPSS, and Reshaping Data Long to Wide in SAS).  To learn more, there are a variety of archived webinars available that provide general information and training, such as this one by the American School Health Association or this handout and archive (scroll past the COVID webinars) from Maternal and Child Health Bureau of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for research on child health, autism, and other salient topics.For quantitative researchers in particular, there are a variety of ways to find and access potential data sources, including:

• Pamela Davis-Green's List of Secondary Datasets
• Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) Find Data Tool
• National Surveys of Children's Health
• Virginia Tech’s Data Resources For Social Science
• Google Dataset Search Engine

If you are interested in datasets available from the National Center for Education Statistics, the Distance Learning Dataset Training is a great way to familiarize yourself with specific longitudinal and cross-sectional datasets. Scholars using these datasets and others are also eligible for targeted funding opportunities like these from AERA or the HRSA Autism Secondary Data Analysis Research Program, as well as being eligible for general funding opportunities from various agencies and foundations. As you get started, keep these tips in mind: 

1. Take time to learn about secondary data analysis.
2. As you hone in on a potential data source, be sure to read any technical materials, methods reports, and previous research using the data. Take time to really get to know the data so that you aren’t misusing it.
3. Leave time in your research plans for completing necessary procedures to access the data (e.g., application processes, security requirements, university approval) and secure IRB approval of your project (if applicable; when in doubt, ask your IRB).
4. Document everything you do in the process (e.g., any data manipulation) and keep backups of everything. (Many an analyst has wept over failure to document something key or to save prior code or data files after realizing they needed to backup a few steps to change course). 
5. Don’t be afraid to consult with the original researchers or methodologists if you have questions about the data source.

What questions or concerns do you have for getting started with these approaches? If you’re already doing this work, what professional learning materials and opportunities have you found helpful?

Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses: Opportunities for Pivoting Research during COVID-19

By Kathrin Maki, University of Florida & Bryn Harris, University of Colorado DenverGiven the ongoing pandemic, many early career researchers may need to pivot their research programs because timelines for tenure and promotion and annual expectations may be unchanged and there may be ongoing disruptions to prior research activities. This leaves researchers looking for new, creative ways to advance their research agendas – a challenging yet exciting process. Completing systematic reviews and meta-analyses may be one method of advancing research and productivity during the pandemic, while also contributing to the literature base and knowledge in the field.Defining Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysesThe aim of a systematic review is to use systematic methods to summarize empirical evidence to produce reliable findings that inform decision making (Cochrane, 2021). Many literature reviews within articles in peer-reviewed journals differ from systematic reviews because they do not involve a systematic search of the literature, but rather authors select the articles reviewed, which may result in selection bias. Systemic review is an umbrella term for approaches that attempt to reduce this bias to provide a comprehensive synthesis of available evidence on a given topic.Like all research, systematic reviews vary in quality. Robust, reproducible methods for determining eligibility criteria for studies will result in a higher caliber systemic review. The comprehensiveness of the systematic search is particularly important in systematic reviews. The creation of a comprehensive and well-conceptualized protocol for study inclusion is an essential component of a strong systematic review. This article provides a detailed overview of conducting a strong systematic review in the field of psychology. For example, researchers need to decide on study inclusion criteria such as participant age range, study design, conditions, language of publication, and publication type. Researchers will need to select the type of studies to include such as RCT only, quasi-experimental designs, single-case designs, or qualitative research. Researchers will also need to determine what type of literature to include, for example, the potential inclusion of unpublished studies.Meta-analysis is a subtype of systematic review. Meta-analyses use statistical methods to summarize the results of the included studies. By quantitatively combining outcomes from all relevant studies, a meta-analysis can provide specific estimates of efficacy that are more precise than single studies because they are computed from a larger body of information (Cochrane, 2021). Like systematic reviews generally, the protocol process for study inclusion is often the most time intensive aspect of meta-analysis. Many published meta-analyses do not include important variables such as race, culture, and indicators of socioeconomic status, thus leading to large gaps in the literature. Examining such variables provides comprehensive information on treatment effectiveness across populations. In systematic reviews generally, and meta-analyses specifically, a discussion of the way in which the authors reduced their risk of bias is also considered best practice (referred to as publication bias; McClain et al., 2021). Although meta-analyses rely on quantitative data, a different form of systematic review called a meta-synthesis summarizes qualitative studies. See Lachal et al. (2017) for an overview of this methodology.Advantages of Systematic Reviews There are several potential advantages of systematic reviews for early career scholars’ research agendas. Many early career scholars experience the pressure of demonstrating research productivity through consistent publication of articles in high quality journals relevant to their field. As part of the tenure and promotion process, early career scholars often need to demonstrate their research productivity (in addition to teaching and service). Systematic reviews contribute to research in school psychology by providing a comprehensive understanding of the state of the evidence for a specific topic. The knowledge gained through systematic reviews can provide synthesized empirical support for implementing certain practices or it can suggest areas in need of further research when results suggest practices may be ineffective or lacking support.Systematic reviews are also often highly cited, and if conducted rigorously, may be published in strong journals. At some institutions, metrics such as impact factor and citation counts factor into tenure and promotion decisions. Regardless of how closely impact factors and citation counts are examined at your university, you will want to show how your research contributes to the field and such metrics are one way to do so. All school psychology journals welcome systematic reviews and meta-analyses submissions.Advantages to Conducting Systematic Reviews During the COVID-19 Pandemic One year into the pandemic, scholars continue to deal with its effects on their research productivity and teaching. For many school psychology researchers, our work is dependent upon collecting data in K12 schools, but many school districts across the country continue to provide instruction virtually. Even in school districts where face-to-face instruction is provided, students’ educational experiences are anything but traditional. Further, many schools are restricting visitors from school campuses in an effort to minimize opportunities for spreading the virus. Similarly, data collection in other applied settings (e.g., clinics, hospitals) has also been impacted by changes in how services are provided to clients (e.g., telehealth). As a result of these significant changes in systems’ functioning, applied researchers are experiencing significant setbacks in conducting research.Systematic reviews can offer an alternative research pathway for students, faculty, and other early career scholars who have hit significant roadblocks in conducting research during the pandemic. The most meaningful, and perhaps obvious, advantage to conducting systematic reviews is the elimination of the logistical challenges of conducting traditional research in applied settings during the pandemic. Data collection for systematic reviews is dependent upon accessing published articles (and perhaps dissertations and grey literature) from your university library, which you can comfortably do while you work from home during the pandemic.Speaking of your university library, your librarian can be a valuable resource if you conduct a systematic review. They are experts in how to navigate the library databases, which databases may be most appropriate for your area of research, how to effectively search the databases, and many other related areas as well. In our experiences, university librarians have been extremely helpful for accessing and learning various resources to support such work.Challenges and LimitationsFor many of us in school psychology, we are all too familiar with the logistical challenges and time intensity of collecting data in complicated systems (e.g., schools, clinics, hospitals). Systematic reviews, therefore, may appear to be the answer you’ve been hoping for to continue your research while alleviating the challenges associated with traditional data collection. And they can be. However, it is also important to be aware of the challenges of conducting systematic reviews before getting started.Systematic reviews can be time intensive and, like all research, require a rigorous methodological approach. They require significant planning and forethought to develop your methodology as you plan and revise appropriate search terms, inclusion/exclusion criteria, and coding schemes before implementing your study. Like school-based research, ensuring you have enough personnel resources can also be a challenge. Your systematic review will be more methodologically rigorous and the results more reliable if more than one researcher determines study eligibility and codes at least a portion, if not all, of the articles and variables. Ensuring you and your collaborators reliably determine study inclusion and code variables typically requires an iterative process of practice coding (and resulting revisions to the criteria and codes), all of which can take an extensive amount of time.There are also methodological challenges associated with systematic reviews. Attempting to review studies that have been conducted in different ways and incorporate different variables or measures can present a quandary as to how best to capture study methods and appropriately synthesize or meta-analyze findings. Further, meta-analytical approaches continue to advance including, but not limited to, the use of multilevel modeling, effect size calculation for single-case design studies, and means for assessing publication bias, all of which require methodological and analytical skill fluency. It may be helpful to consult or collaborate with a methodological or quantitative expert for procedural and statistical support.More systematic reviews and meta-analyses have been conducted during the global pandemic across the world. However, a recent meta-analysis of medical studies pertaining to COVID-19 interventions has uncovered substantial flaws in research design, thus leading to potentially problematic medical intervention decisions based on the results. This finding also raises the issue of promoting expedited science and the need for scientific rigor regardless of global context. School psychology researchers must understand the nuances of this method and work to produce rigorous studies in order to support effective decisions among stakeholders using study results (e.g., practitioners, policy makers, other researchers).Introductory Readings and Resources The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) provides guidance on the reporting of systematic review methodology and results. It outlines a protocol for conducting systematic reviews, the information that should be included in each section of the resulting manuscript, and provides a diagram template for reporting of study inclusion procedures. Many journals will encourage or require that systematic reviews are conducted and reported in line with the PRISMA guidelines.For general information on conducting systematic reviews and meta-analyses:

• Higgins JPT, Thomas J, Chandler J, Cumpston M, Li T, Page MJ, Welch VA (editors). Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions version 6.1 (updated September 2020). Cochrane, 2020. Available from http://www.training.cochrane.org/handbook.
• Siddaway, A. P., Wood, A. M., & Hedges, L. V (2019). How to do a systematic review: A best practice guide for conducting and reporting narrative reviews, meta-analyses, and meta-syntheses. Annual Review of Psychology, 70, 747-770.
• Uman, L. S. (2011). Systematic reviews and meta-analyses. Journal of the Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 20, 57-59.
• Zelinksky, N. A. M. & Shadish . W. (2016). A demonstration of how to do a meta-analysis that combines single-case designs with between-groups experiments: The effects of choice making on challenging behaviors performed by people with disabilities. Developmental Neurorehabilitation, 21, 266-278. https://doi.org/10.3109/17518423.2015.1100690

For information on methodological considerations for systematic reviews:

• Ahn, S., Ames, A. J., & Myers, M. D. (2012). A review of meta-analyses in education: Methodological strengths and weaknesses. Review of Educational Research, 82, 436-476. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654312458162
• Hohn, R. E., Slaney, K. L., & Tafreshi, D. (2019). Primary study quality in psychological meta-analyses: An empirical assessment of recent practice. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 1-15. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02667

For information on examining and addressing publication bias in meta-analyses, see:

• McClain,M. B., Callan, G., Harris, B., Floyd, R. G., Golson, M. E., Haverkamp, C. R., Longhurst, D. N., Benallie, K. J. (2021). Methods for addressing publication bias in school psychology journals: A descriptive review of meta-analyses from 1980 to 2019. Journal of School Psychology, 84, 74–94.

Top 10 Tips for New Faculty

On November 5, 2020, the ECF’s Lindsay Fallon and Bryn Harris hosted a virtual social for new faculty where they highlighted their top 10 tips from past ECF posts. See the tips below, linked to the original posts. 10. Self-Care MattersIn a year in which the election, racial justice, and a global pandemic are at the forefront, take care of yourself to help others. 

• Take breaks from watching, reading, or listening to news stories, including social media. Hearing about the pandemic repeatedly can be upsetting.
• Take care of your body by engaging in relaxation techniques (deep breathing, stretching, meditation), healthy eating, exercise, and adequate sleep. 
• Make time to unwind and connect with others. Talking with trusted friends and colleagues can help to process difficult events and feelings. 

9. It’s OK to Not Have Academic Parenthood All Figured OutIf you are caring for others, be kind to yourself. In this post, Dr. Sterett Mercer reminded us to:

• Match tasks with current capabilities. 
• Planning and initiating a major project at a “low point” may not be the best use of time. 
• Be aware of the cycles of the work week and academic year and set reasonable expectations. 
• Try to relax and stay in the game - burnout is real!

8. Recognize That Imposter Syndrome Is CommonKnow that you belong; fake it ‘til you make it. Our anonymous blogger, Dr. Ima Syke, pointed out the following steps to help deal with imposter syndrome:

• Recognize it within yourself and in others. 
• Regularly remind yourself of your accomplishments. 
• Become keenly aware of your strengths. 
• Discuss imposter syndrome with your students. 
• Seek support. 

7. Be as Efficient as Possible With Course PrepFind ways to use time wisely when prepping courses and teaching. Dr. Bryn Harris recommends that you: 

• Schedule time to prep. 
• Make revisions right away! Take notes during or immediately after class on things that went well and things that need to be improved. 
• Teach early in the week if you can. It forces you to be efficient, and leaves the rest of the week for other tasks. 
• Use the notes feature in PowerPoint to remind you what you were thinking when you made the slide a year ago. Be kind to your future self!

6. Know Who You Are As a MentorBe intentional about how you will mentor and know your limits. Drs. Bryn Harris and Amanda Sullivan advocated that we: 

• Seek support from others when stuck and to learn ideas.
• Identify strong role models, be inspired by their style. 
• Know your strengths and decide what your approach will be/is. 
• Define expectations, roles and goals. 
• Set boundaries.
• Follow through with what you say you will do. 

5. Your Research Agenda Can EvolveYou are not wedded to who you were in your cover letter. Dr. Milena A. Keller-Margulis emphasized that it’s important you: 

• Don’t think of your research agenda as static but rather inherently reflective and ongoing.
• The best way to determine (or evolve) the general topic(s) of your research agenda is to pay attention to the topics that interest you the most. You might discover this through reading the literature but these ideas may also surface through your practical or field-based experiences. 
• Do not be afraid to test drive some areas of interest by getting involved in or exploring new areas, and talking to other people with similar interests.
• These activities will help you narrow your focus to the topics and questions that are the most interesting to you. 

4. A Manuscript Rejection Is Sometimes a BlessingIt’s awful, but can also teach you a lesson. Dr. Laura Pendergast shared this story: “Are you done?” my mentor asked patiently. My beautiful manuscript had been rejected… again. My mentor had been listening to me complain for 15 minutes. I was starting a tenure-track position and needed to publish. I had conducted my analyses using the most current statistical techniques. I had painstakingly crafted my arguments and drawn careful, well-supported conclusions. Why didn’t these reviewers understand my paper?! My mentor looked at me calmly and shared a hard truth that changed the way I thought about my writing. She said, “The editor chose three reviewers who he viewed as trusted experts. These hand-picked experts didn’t understand your paper. If multiple, highly educated people didn’t understand what you wrote, whose fault is that?” She was right. Publishing manuscripts is not just about being technically correct and scientifically sound. It is about communicating with an audience… I began by making a new outline. I kept my original results section but rewrote the rest of the paper in a way that was clear and conveyed why the work was meaningful. The revised paper was quickly accepted at another journal.” 3. Start Thinking Now About Your Personal StatementIt’s never too early to start thinking about T&P. Panelists offered the following advice on crafting your materials:Dr. Jamilia Blake: “Your CV provides a quantitative account of what you have accomplished in a set amount of time. I often think of my CV as my personal reference list. However, your candidate statement is qualitative and provides the context for your work. It should not merely be a narrative recount of your CV. It is your opportunity to bring attention to themes in your work that you feel are important and will eventually have impact on the field. It is your space to discuss how your work shows promise for changing school psychology practice and research.”Dr. Amanda Sullivan: “I used my statements to explain activities and describe linkages between them - to tell the story I wanted them to take away from reviewing my materials.” 2. Be Intentional About Managing Your TimeSelf-manage or track your time devoted to research, teaching and service. Dr. Stacy-Ann January offered the following recommendations: “I use a program/app called Toggl (many other programs are available). I started with 3 broad categories (research, teaching, service) and then kept track of everything I did related to those categories. Each week, Toggl sends me an email with a breakdown of how I spent my time during the previous week.”Know when you write best. Dr. Dave Klingbeil shared his approach: “I write best late at night, when there are far fewer distractions. I also tend to be more productive when I write almost every day for 1-2 hours (not always attainable), rather than trying to protect two full days for ‘research time’.” 1. Give Yourself the Gift of NoDr. Amanda Sullivan pointed out, As an early career scholar, you have a finite amount of time so there reaches a point where saying yes to one thing means saying no to another - or where you risk overburdening yourself to the point where your performance in other areas of work suffers. Saying yes to x often means less time for y. Learning to say no first requires identifying your priorities so that you can easily identify requests and opportunities inconsistent with those priorities. Practice pleasantly and unapologetically saying no. It’s okay to say no without offering any more justification than you are simply unavailable. What other tips or favorite posts would you share with new faculty?

Archived Webinar - Applying for the NIH Loan Repayment Program

The Early Career Forum recently hosted a webinar on the NIH Loan Repayment Programs (LRP). This webinar was co-hosted by Dr. Eric Moody, Wyoming Institute for Disabilities, a past LRP recipient and NIH LRP Ambassador; and Dr. Bryn Harris, University of Colorado Denver, a recent NIH LRP awardee. The NIH LRP is designed to recruit and retain qualified health professionals in research careers. The program alleviates some financial pressure of remaining in research careers instead of obtaining positions in private industry or private practice. The program repays up to $50,000 annually of a researcher’s qualified educational debt in return for a commitment to engage in research endeavors over a two year period. The webinar provided an overview of the program, qualifications for submission, application process, and tips for a successful submission. A recording of the webinar is available here.