Processes of negotiating and maintaining access to the interventionNegotiating access at the organizational level: The intervention

My supervisor arranged for me to work with the intervention through his social networks. He arranged for one of the organization’s executives to interview me, and they agreed to let me study one of their intervention sites for my Ph.D. and publish the findings. In exchange, I would quantify some of their work and provide an additional perspective to the CBPR. I implicitly understood that if the research had positive findings, it could be used as external validation for what they were doing.

Soon after stepping on board, a colleague told me that they had overheard facilitators discussing the university’s involvement in their project as a form of legitimacy. A few months later, one of the executives presented some of my findings to other organizations at a conference. They also asked me for data and analyses for progress reports. This was the first negotiation: I could conduct my Ph.D. research with the intervention if the organization benefitted from my work in a timely and reinforcing way.

Negotiating access at the implementational level: Facilitators

Even though I had organizational approval to study the intervention, I later learned that executives had not asked facilitators if they were comfortable with my research. This resulted in some friction, as how I accessed the intervention influenced my ability to build mutually trusting relationships. Specifically, I faced some hostility from one facilitator, who did not want me around. They did not communicate necessary information with me and ignored my messages, leading me to miss the first two intervention sessions. I contacted a supervisor who permitted me to show up at the next session, but this was one of the worst things I could have done to earn the facilitator's trust: The way I accessed the field could have resulted in a ‘failure’ to conduct good field research [23, 24]. I spent months trying to establish a better relationship with this facilitator, who was ultimately a gatekeeper to others.

I understood that having a researcher present was uncomfortable for the facilitator. They were explicit about where my role began and ended: they were the experts, and I was a student researcher. I explained that I was not there to monitor or evaluate their job performance, but to watch the processes and group dynamics that took place within the intervention and its participants. I made a conscious effort not to overstep the boundaries they had set for me, and to help where I could. For example, helping set up and clean the room before and after meetings was one way to show the facilitators that I respected them and their time, while simultaneously allowing me to talk to them without participants present. The facilitator who mistrusted me made many comments about my eagerness to help and often joked about how ‘lucky’ they were to have someone in academia bring them a coffee or put away chairs. Over time, the tone of the comments became increasingly more positive, and I started to feel a small shift. The facilitator eventually left their position, and my interactions with the other facilitators became more relaxed.

The other facilitators started asking for my opinions, and we often built on each other’s observations to make sense of what had happened during the intervention. I learned that they were tired and overworked because they had been assigned a larger geographic space than they were used to, without the additional resources or personnel that they needed. I had experience working with communities and leading activities, so I could sometimes assist. While they had initially been very stern about my role as a student researcher, they started to share some responsibility and give me more ‘hands-on’ experience. I facilitated some focus groups for them and typed minutes when asked. This made me feel like a part of the team, but it also increased my ability to qualitatively study the intervention. This was the second negotiation: I could observe the intervention more easily if I made myself somewhat useful to the facilitators.

Even though observing the intervention was a struggle, the quantitative portion of my research was more appreciated. The facilitators were keen to know survey findings, even if they felt that collecting this information might be ‘too much’ and could initially overburden some community members. I discussed which questions to include with the facilitators, and I conducted analyses that helped respond to their questions and draw associations between variables. The facilitators told me that the larger dataset helped validate what they were hearing in interviews, but it also provided information from people they were unable to interview. This was the third negotiation: I could distribute a survey if I would also conduct analyses that supported the facilitators.

Negotiating at the community level: Participants

The facilitators granted me access to the field by getting the municipality’s permission and facilitating my access to participants. This was essential, as I quickly learned that I would have otherwise been unwelcome in the community. Ironically, this process led me to question the principles of CBPR as having an innate ‘ethic of inclusion’ [25], and the sources of power researchers typically hold. I felt that my intersectional positionality played an important role throughout my fieldwork: I was born in Canada to parents who immigrated from Iran, and I am darker-skinned. While I was able to teach and work in French, French is my third language and I speak it with an accent. I was an outsider and the only thing I could change to ‘fit in’ was the way I dressed and presented myself.

It became clear that there were some feelings of xenophobia in the community. The open-ended areas on the first questionnaire had responses highlighting how the town was being “invaded by Americans, Russians, and Chinese people”. Others highlighted that the best thing to do for the town would be to get rid of outsiders. At one of the first meetings I attended, someone vocally stated that they should “assimilate” the outsiders. A municipal leader refused to let us distribute questionnaires in English because people in the town were supposed to speak French. In short, various aspects of my research quickly revealed that there was considerable dislike of “expats” (their term) and some community members were actively excluding non-Francophones from taking part. My identity and positionality as someone they already disliked made engaging with this community particularly difficult. I was unsure what to do, especially because CBPR guidelines often emphasize the researcher as having multiple dimensions of power (e.g., Whiteness) and working with marginalized communities.

While Switzerland is not known for being particularly diverse, the disdain for ‘expats’ seemed particular to this town. I had visited other intervention sites in different towns to prepare for my fieldwork, where participants had been warmer and vocally curious about my origins and why I was there. Even if there were interactions that made me uncomfortable at times (e.g., insisting I go on a date with a man at least twice my age because they thought we had the same ethnic background), people were willing to interact with me. In this intervention, I felt that some residents were actively put off by me and avoided asking me any questions about where I was from or why I was there. It was only after a couple of months that participants felt comfortable enough to ask where I was really from, why I didn’t have a Québécois accent, or why I had darker skin if I was from Canada. Of course, some participants never warmed up to me, and one woman even refused to shake my hand or acknowledge me when I introduced myself.

Even though my identity made things harder to navigate, I held a form of power through my dual positionality as a student and a researcher. I had already negotiated access with the intervention facilitators and had been introduced as someone who would be following the project for a while. Being a researcher gave me some legitimacy in participants’ eyes, but being a student was equally, if not more, valuable. I think that my willingness to learn about their culture and the opportunity for them to share knowledge with me encouraged some participants to be more helpful than they might have been otherwise. Some even took on a protective, almost grandparental role by the end of my fieldwork. This dual status enabled me to overcome some of the barriers that my intersecting identities created.

Gaining the community's trust was a slow process, but I was able to build positive relationships over time. Many residents had lived in other countries, seemed amused by my interest in their small town, and were happy to share their experiences and culture with me. I think that I gained trust by regularly attending meetings and by showing that I was willing to improve my French, learn their customs, and contribute to their community. One facilitator noted that residents started warming up to me after I brought Nanaimo bars to share with everyone. I also think they enjoyed more subtle things, like when I showed a preference for a regional white wine and when I laughed at local jokes.

Despite the smaller group dynamics, I felt I earned the most trust when I presented some of my quantitative findings at a community forum. Participants had asked me to share my findings with them numerous times, and I felt they warmed up to me once they saw I was true to my word of sharing information back into their community. I started to feel much more comfortable and had more friendly interactions with participants. For example, some started to give me three pecks on the cheek for both hello and goodbye, which was symbolic of acceptance.

Some participants became invested in my student trajectory and tried to help me on different occasions. For example, one participant offered to edit my French texts multiple times, and another, a retired anthropologist, often checked in to see how I was finding my fieldwork. Once I had left a book on site, and when I returned to retrieve it, the room was locked. As I was trying to convince the concierge to let me in, one of the participants pulled up on a motorbike and asked me how he could help and if I needed a ride to the train station. It was moments like these where I felt truly accepted by some participants. This brings me to my fourth and final negotiation: Community members were willing to accept me with open arms if I participated in their community meaningfully.

Losing access to the intervention by breaking negotiationsLosing access to the community

Throughout my fieldwork, the quantitative portion of my study facilitated access and was readily accepted. This was a double-edged sword, as the findings (and how I chose to share them) started a domino effect resulting in me eventually losing access to the intervention. Near the end of my research, one of my findings was that social capital had increased for the intervention participants, but importantly, that those who participated in the intervention already had higher amounts of social capital to begin with. In the rest of the community, social capital had declined that year. I had initially presented these findings to facilitators and then obtained permission to present these results to participants. After presenting, I asked them what they thought, whether they could think of any explanations, and how we could continue to build on this to improve the intervention. In other words, how could the intervention include people who did not already have high amounts of social capital?

Many of the participants vocally disagreed with the findings. Some asked questions about how the research was done, the scales used, and the overall validity of the results. Others stressed that the intervention had benefitted them individually. I made the mistake of acknowledging that while it benefited some people, some survey respondents indicated feeling excluded by the intervention. I could sense some of the more active participants felt deflated by this information. The facilitators sensed it was a sensitive issue and took the discussion over. Later, my supervisor told me that I had not sugar-coated the findings enough. The COVID-19 pandemic started shortly after this interaction, and I did not have contact with the residents after this point. Looking back, I thought I lost access because sharing my findings meant that I was no longer participating in their community in a way that was acceptable to them.

Losing access to the facilitators

A few months after I had completed my fieldwork, a facilitator told me that presenting my research had been distressing to participants. From what the facilitator told me, participants had approached them in fear that they might lose funding because of my results. I knew that the facilitators were in a delicate position: They wanted to address issues to improve the intervention, but they also needed to protect participants. In one sense, my work was no longer validating what the facilitators were doing, hence breaking another negotiation.

I regret that I broke the facilitators’ trust after they attended my public Ph.D. examination. One of my examiners had recently left academia and was working for the government, and unfortunately, was also the most critical of the intervention. Afterwards, a facilitator told me that they had understood my need to share findings with other academics to obtain my degree, but that they had not expected a decision-maker to also be present. I had not considered how it would make the facilitators feel, or that they would think it would pose a risk to their livelihoods.

Losing access to the organization

I ended up losing access to the intervention when I broke the facilitator's trust. While I had already defended my thesis, there had been a possibility to collect another wave of data once the intervention had been completed, albeit with another student. The facilitators informed me that they had spoken to executives and that the final wave of data collection would no longer be necessary. I had broken the negotiation that the organization could benefit from my work in a reinforcing way, leading them to withdraw from future research.

Overall, I gained access to a CBPR at the formal organizational level, starting with a negotiation that I could study the intervention if my findings would benefit them. Looking back, I see that our respective understandings of this negotiation diverged in terms of what benefit means. I thought the benefit was to provide research tools and help generate knowledge that would contribute to transformational CBPR, but I also felt that the negotiations relied on my ‘being useful’ to support this [7]. What I failed to recognize was that transforming communities for the better also relied on transforming an organization that was hoping my findings would support its existing agenda and CBPR funding. I ultimately lost access when I broke trust with participants and facilitators, who felt that my findings could have negatively impacted their funding. The risks and costs of continuing to collaborate with researchers in the CBPR process (i.e., the risk of negative findings being public) outweighed any benefits.