Interdisciplinary Strategies Nancy Edwards Jane Aubin

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Interdisciplinary Strategies Nancy EdwardsJane
Aubin
University of Alberta October, 2009
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Overview

• Your Experience and Conundrums
• Why Interdisciplinarity?
• Assembling a Team
• Negotiating and Defining Roles
• Clinical and Population Health Perspectives
• Basic Science Perspective
• Weaving Interdisciplinarity into a Grant
• What Reviewers are Looking For
• Some Dos and Donts
• What Makes Interdisciplinarity Work?
• Sustaining Interdisciplinarity

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1. Your Experience and Conundrums

• What are your biggest concerns regarding
  interdisciplinarity?

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2. Why Interdisciplinarity?

• Research questions can be asked that cannot be
  answered with one discipline alone
• Complexity of the questions and expected outcomes
  can increase
• Examples
• Team researching the causes and best treatments
  for arthritis pain could involve neuroscientists,
  physiologists, cell biologists, physicists,
  rheumatologists, physical therapists, and
  sociologists asking novel questions about the
  mechanisms and therapeutic options in preclinical
  models and patients

Team examining impact of the built environment
on obesity could include geographers, architects,
engineers, nutritionists, urban planners,
anthropologists
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2. Why Interdisciplinarity?

• Its enriching and fun!
• Provides new insights, different disciplinary
  lens to examine problem and interpret findings
• Team members can stimulate and challenge each
  other
• Add new dimensions to how we conceptualize and
  try to solve research questions of the team and
  other aspects of our individual research programs.

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3. Assembling a Team

• Start early
• Use strategies to extend your networks
• Be up front about expectations
• Be open to other input and perspectives
• Interdisciplinarity may redefine your focus and
  approach
• Think outside the box

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4. Negotiating and Defining Roles
Any team, interdisciplinary or not, needs a clear
leader who has a vision of what is required for
the research question and what each team member
will bring The leader needs experience or has
qualities of leadership that will engage others
Recognize that not everyone is a leader and not
everyone is a team player
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4. Negotiating and Defining Roles

• Define roles up front, but allow team members to
  offer meaningful input on what is possible or who
  else or what else may be needed
• Set in place, from the outset, a mechanism, for
  re-defining roles and scope of contributions, if
  required
• Consider authorship guidelines

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4. Negotiating and Defining RolesQuestions to
Ask

• Clinical and Population Health Perspectives

Is a proposed member of the team bringing
conceptual, methodological or technical skills?
Connections to decision-makers, links to other
networks, insights from clinical practice or
policy forums? Role on project Co-PI,
investigator, collaborator, other?
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4. Negotiating and Defining RolesQuestions to
Ask

• Clinical and Population Health Perspectives
  (Contd)

Expectations regarding space for research
assistants? Access to databases, patients,
clinical settings, policy settings?
Expectations regarding graduate student and
postdoc fellow involvement?
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4. Negotiating and Defining RolesQuestions to
Ask

• Basic Science Perspective

Is s/he bringing a required piece of equipment?
What policies will govern access to that skill
or equipment by team members or others (members
of labs who are not core team members but may
work on related projects)? How much capacity does
the person, the equipment or the lab space
have?
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4. Negotiating and Defining RolesQuestions to
Ask

• Basic Science Perspective (Contd)

Are there expectations around other personnel/lab
staff being involved? Who will pay or
contribute to maintenance of equipment being used
should it break or purchase new equipment ? Who
else needs to be consulted? Who owns and who else
uses the equipment or lab space?
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5. Weaving Interdisciplinarity Into a Grant
Submission

• What Reviewers are Looking For

• Make interdisciplinarity explicit throughout the
  grant
• Explain why interdisciplinarity is important/a
  focus/a strength of the grant
• Describe the contributions and roles of each team
  member
• Make sure the proposed contributions to the
  research match the time team members have
  available

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5. Weaving Interdisciplinarity Into a Grant
Submission

• What Reviewers are Looking For (Contd)

• Consider team strategies that can be used to
  ensure/build interdisciplinary
• Consider a governance structure for
  decision-making that allows you to optimize
  contributions of different disciplines playing
  different roles
• Potential for advisory committee

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5. Weaving Interdisciplinarity Into a Grant
Submission

• Some Dos and Donts

• More than a list of disciplines and more than the
  sum of the parts/individuals
• Thoughtful description of roles and
  responsibilities that reflect disciplinary
  contributions
• Novelty and relevance

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5. Weaving Interdisciplinarity Into a Grant
Submission

• Some Dos and Donts (Contd)

• Appropriate commitment of time/space/resources of
  each team member
• Is there existing glue amongst at least some of
  the team members and has it been described?
• Dont think strong aims or goals will alleviate
  or hide concerns about weak methods or
  insufficient attention to interdisciplinarity

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5. Weaving Interdisciplinarity Into a Grant
Submission

• Some Dos and Donts (Contd)

• A seamless proposal. The depth and flow of
  different aspects of the proposal should be as
  uniform as possible and well-integrated.
• Every participant must ensure adequate coverage
  of their discipline/approaches/ techniques.
• E.g., dont include a biostatiscian, health
  economist or bioinformatics expert because
  sophisticated analysis is required and then not
  have that team member review what is said about
  that analysis.

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5. Weaving Interdisciplinarity Into a Grant
Submission

• Some Dos and Donts (Contd)

• Include plans for data sharing/ dissemination in
  the proposal and for meetings of the whole team
  and/or sub-teams at a frequency appropriate for
  the expected data generation and expected
  outcomes.

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6. What Makes Interdisciplinarity Work?
Thoughtful leadership Environment of
fairness Time and commitment to learn from each
other Participants buy into the proposal and
pull their weight, meet their commitments, and
offer solutions to problems that may
arise Respect for each others knowledge and what
each is bringing to the project
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6. What Makes Interdisciplinarity Work?
Respect for all levels of contributions (PIs,
trainees, technicians) A framework, from the
outset, for how credit and authorships will be
decided (E.g., does one discipline publish papers
routinely with 2-4 authors and another with
gt10-15 authors what happens to intellectual
property?) Frequent communication and mechanisms
for sharing data, setbacks, re-alignment
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7. Sustaining Interdisciplinarity
Recognize the importance of each team members
role and contributions Share credit - address it
from the outset Establish boundaries if needed
(e.g., members at different academic levels)
Recognize the need for continued growth within
individual disciplines Have mechanisms and
strategies for team member review and
replenishment Have a process for conflict
resolution