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Balance of power. Occupational therapists (OTs) often
conduct interpretive research -- they interview people to formulate new
understandings about human experience. OTs are committed to represent
this experience as authentically as possible, and in doing so to protect
the welfare and dignity of research participants, according to Ellen S.
Cohn, a Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences clinical
associate professor of occupational therapy. She and doctoral student
Kathleen Doyle Lyons (SAR’03) recently reflected on the research
process and identified several points where researchers need be vigilant
in recognizing the balance of power between researcher and participant.
They point out that researchers “define areas of inquiry, set boundaries
around their investigation, choose participants, interpret data, and create
a text that will be viewed as authorized knowledge.” They call on
researchers to take a “power reflexive stance,” reflecting
critically on themselves as researchers and on how power is distributed
in all research interactions. The authors cite key points where power
is negotiated, including how the researchers introduce themselves and
their research, the setting in which research is conducted, and the way
that the interview is structured, as well as how much the researcher shares
of his or her own personal information. They also consider the power inherent
in interpreting data from interviews. They examine the process of incorporating
“member checks” into the interpretative analysis -- asking
interviewees to respond to the interpretations drawn from interviews and
presenting both their own and the participants’ interpretations.
According to Cohn and Lyons, “ . . . power is not an item to be
addressed in a research protocol, but an active force embedded in every
methodological decision we make.” They propose that all researchers
“ . . . continually ask the questions and struggle with the various
implications embedded in every methodological choice we make.”
Their article was published in the January/February 2003 issue of The
American Journal of Occupational Therapy.
Body building. It’s no news that
the United States is a fat nation -- and getting fatter every year. The
number of overweight children doubled between 1980 and 1994, and a 1999
study by the U.S. Public Health Service reported that 13 percent of children
ages 6 to 11 and 14 percent ages 12 to 19 are overweight.
In an effort to better understand this disturbing trend, Linda G. Bandini,
a SAR clinical assistant professor, and colleagues at the Clinical Research
Center at MIT and the Tufts University School of Medicine recently conducted
a comprehensive 10-year prospective study to determine how metabolic and
lifestyle factors may relate to girls becoming overweight. The initial
group included 196 girls between the ages of 8 and 12 who were recruited
from public schools in Cambridge and Somerville, Mass.
Since obesity results from an energy imbalance, an increase in caloric
intake, a decrease in activity (calories burned), or both, the energy
expended by the girls was measured in three component states: resting
(RMR), nonresting (NREE), and daily, or total, energy expenditure (TEE).
The researchers then analyzed how the amount of energy expended related
to the girls’ body composition, maturational stage, race-ethnicity,
and the weight status of their parents.
Their analyses of the baseline data revealed several factors that appear
to relate strongly. Resting metabolic rate was found to be generally higher
among girls with at least one overweight parent than among those with
two normal-weight parents. This seems to contradict the commonly held
belief that children with overweight parents may have a lower metabolic
rate, and thus are at elevated risk for becoming obese.
Nonresting energy expenditure level was found to be significantly lower
for girls who had already entered puberty (but who had not yet menstruated--
a state known as premenarcheal) than were those of girls who were prepubescent.
Energy measurements in all three states were lower among African-American
girls than Caucasian girls, although the study authors state that the
sample did not include enough Hispanic and Asian participants to stratify
the results by race and ethnicity.
Bandini and her colleagues will next evaluate the longitudinal data they
have collected to determine whether the reductions in energy expenditure
seen during this premenarcheal period actually lead to increased weight
gain throughout adolescence, and to better understand what can be done
to halt the increasing trend of weight gain among adolescents and adults.
"Research
Briefs" is written by Joan Schwartz in the Office of the Provost. To read
more about BU research, visit http://www.bu.edu/research.
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21
February 2003
Boston University
Office of University Relations