Innovations in research dissemination: research participants sharing stories at a conference

BACKGROUND

The dissemination of findings is a crucial part of research. There are many forms of dissemination and audiences differ depending on the focus of the dissemination.

AIM

To present using a recent experience as an example an overview of the benefits to vulnerable research participants of participating in the dissemination of research, as well as potential issues that may occur.

DISCUSSION

There are many benefits to involving research participants in conference presentations. However, it is crucial to provide appropriate support and debriefing, and to put plans in place to ensure they are safe.

CONCLUSION

Multifaceted dissemination strategies are needed to meet the various audiences for research. Involving research participants can provide unique perspectives. However, careful planning is required to produce the best possible outcomes.

IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE

Researchers preparing to disseminate research findings with research participants in a conference setting can use this article to assist with the recognition of benefits and challenges that may arise.

Idioms of resilience among cancer patients in urban South Africa: An anthropological heuristic for the study of culture and resilience

Despite the large body of research on idioms of distress in anthropology and transcultural psychiatry, few scholars have examined the concepts that people use to describe social and psychological resilience. The experience of social and psychological resilience is embedded in and shaped by social, political, and economic contexts-much like the factors that shape idioms of distress. As resilience literature more broadly has adopted a socio-ecological rather than trait-based approach, anthropology has much to contribute. This article investigates what idioms of resilience and cultural scripts emerge among low-income patients with cancer residing in Soweto, a peri-urban neighborhood in Johannesburg, South Africa. We conducted 80 life history interviews to better understand what social and psychological factors led some people to thrive more than others despite extraordinary adversity. We describe one idiom of resilience, acceptance (ukwamukela in isiZulu), and three broader themes of resilience that emerged from life history narrative interviews (social support, religious support, and receiving medical care). We also present two examples from study participants that weave these concepts together. Our findings suggest that rarely is one form of resilience experienced in isolation. A focus on idioms of resilience can help chart the complex dimensions of acceptance and the dynamic social, religious, political, and temporal factors that mediate both suffering and resilience within individuals and communities.

How to Fail a Scale: Reflections on a Failed Attempt to Assess Resilience

How we interpret concepts from suffering to survival has been historically debated in the field of anthropology, transcultural psychiatry, and global mental health. These debates have centered on the notion that such concepts are cross-culturally reproducible, although scholars who work the boundaries of culture, medicine, and psychiatry often triangulate methods from internationally standardized scales to various interpretive methods from participant observation to narrative. This article considers resilience, as opposed to suffering, as the subject of a reproducible entity by discussing the failure of an attempt to capture resilience via an internationally reputed scale called the "Resilience Scale for Adults" among cancer patients in urban South Africa. Our effort to utilize the internationally validated scale, and our attempt to draw on ethnographic and interview work to translate this scale to a locally relevant entity failed due to linguistic, cultural, and practical issues. In brief, the attempt failed because our resilience scale was too long, syntactically ambiguous, and culturally inappropriate. We write this article to spur a larger conversation about evaluating resilience from scale to ethnography, and how the concept and measurement of resilience might figure into fields of anthropology and medicine.