when people make decisions for you
My supervisor was quick in my first year to discuss the pains of empirical research recruitment as it hinges on waiting for other people’s willingness or ability to help.
I don’t think I entered into my second year, beginning recruitment, with any delusion that it would be an easy or short process because of the multiple conversations and attempted back up plans we made to combat this. It’s been multiple months of emails, excel sheets tracking answers and locations, explaining and reexplaining when they don’t read what I’ve sent carefully. All expected, all part of the process of undertaking research with participants.
What I hadn’t been expecting is people making decisions for others without giving them a chance to make it themselves. I might be particularly impacted by this because it’s something I have had to learn in therapy to stop doing to others in my life. Deciding they’re too busy to help, deciding they’re too overwhelmed to listen, deciding they are too stressed to attend - all without asking them. I was making decisions for people without their knowledge, without their participation. I think many of us do this in many different ways, particularly to our friends as it’s a relationship that doesn’t have much scaffolding in the way romantic relationships do. But I was not expecting to bump up against this issue in research.
Where people aren’t giving families, children, other therapists, their own choice to participate. Instead no one is being asked, people are just deciding for them that they’re too busy, too overwhelmed, too vulnerable. Which means my study can’t even get to the people who might say yes, it’s stopped at the door. It’s an incredibly frustrating spot to be in because there isn’t much that can be done without severely changing my study because it can’t even reach the people who could consent to participate.
On top of that, the folks that are stopping my research at the door, are the same ones that sit in conversation with me about how disappointing it is that our field lacks research, that our therapies don’t receive funding. Expect posts about pivots halfway through a PhD to come.