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Toward a Science of Transdisciplinary Action Research

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American Journal of Community Psychology

Abstract

This paper offers a conceptual framework for establishing a science of transdisciplinary action research. Lewin's (1951) concept of action research highlights the scientific and societal value of translating psychological research into community problem-solving strategies. Implicit in Lewin's formulation is the importance of achieving effective collaboration among behavioral researchers, community members and policy makers. The present analysis builds on Lewin's analysis by outlining programmatic directions for the scientific study of transdisciplinary research and community action. Three types of collaboration, and the contextual circumstances that facilitate or hinder them, are examined: (1) collaboration among scholars representing different disciplines; (2) collaboration among researchers from multiple fields and community practitioners representing diverse professional and lay perspectives; and (3) collaboration among community organizations across local, state, national, and international levels. In the present analysis, transdisciplinary action research is viewed as a topic of scientific study in its own right to achieve a more complete understanding of prior collaborations and to identify strategies for refining and sustaining future collaborations (and their intended outcomes) among researchers, community members and organizations.

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Notes

  1. The term cross-disciplinary encompasses at least three different kinds of research collaborations: multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary (Rosenfield, 1992). The definitions of these terms are discussed in the next section of the paper.

  2. The dimension of analytical scope, incorporated in Figure 1, suggests that analyses of cross-disciplinary collaborations depend fundamentally on our understanding of what constitutes a distinct scientific discipline (Turner, 2000). Disciplines are organized around the study of particular substantive phenomena—for instance, psychological, social, environmental, and biological “facts” (cf., Durkheim, 1938; Lewin, 1936). The boundaries between specific disciplines and sub-disciplines are to some extent arbitrarily defined and generally agreed upon by communities of scholars (Kuhn, 1970; Thompson Klein, 1990). For instance, the boundaries separating closely related fields such as pharmacology, neuroanatomy, and molecular biology may be non-distinct and even overlapping. Also, some fields such as public health and urban planning are inherently multidisciplinary in that they encompass several different disciplines whose perspectives are combined in analyses of complex topics such as population health and urban development. Despite these definitional complexities, the concept of scientific discipline is useful in that it highlights the distinctive substantive concerns (e.g., biological, psychological, social, and geographical phenomena), analytic levels (e.g., cellular, cognitive, emotional, interpersonal, organizational, and community), concepts, measures and methods associated with particular fields of study. In contrast to unidisciplinary research, transdisciplinary science involves collaboration among scholars representing two or more disciplines where the collaborative products reflect an integration of conceptual and/or methodological perspectives drawn from two or more fields. The intellectual outcomes of unidisciplinary research may share some of the same qualities of TDS outcomes—as measured for example by the quantity, novelty, and utility of new theories and policy recommendations. Nonetheless, it is the integrative quality and scope of transdisciplinary research products (e.g., hypotheses, theories) that set them apart from the more traditional intellectual products of unidisciplinary science.

  3. A distinguishing feature of TD research centers that sets them apart from other large-scale interdisciplinary scientific initiatives (e.g., PO1 and P50 centers, NCI SPORE programs) is their explicit goal of promoting transdisciplinary intellectual integration. Other broad-gauged scientific ventures may include researchers representing diverse disciplines who achieve conceptually integrative products in the course of working together. However, because TD centers are established with the explicit mission of promoting transdisciplinary science, the evaluative criteria applied to them necessarily include measures of whether novel conceptual and methodological integrations actually are achieved by their participants.

  4. The challenges of evaluating community-based coalitions for health promotion are discussed by Wandersman et al. (1996), Israel, Schulz, Parker, and Becker (1998), Butterfoss et al. (1996), Fawcett et al. (2003), and Minkler and Wallerstein (2003). Key constraints include small sample sizes and difficulties in identifying comparison groups and the most appropriate outcome measures (e.g., of improved public health outcomes relative to comparison communities; assessments of a coalition's effectiveness in accomplishing its intended goals). Within the realm of transdisciplinary scientific collaboration, prospective evaluations of collaborative effectiveness are difficult to achieve due to the non-random selection of scientists into collaborative research teams. Moreover, the evaluators of scientific ventures tend to be non-neutral parties in that they are either participants in these collaborations who have a vested interest in their renewal and continued support; or they are non-participants who may bring a decidedly critical stance toward the evaluation since they remain outside of the initiative and, therefore, do not benefit directly from its continuation. Further, few methodological tools or “yardsticks” for evaluating the scientific, policy and health outcomes of collaborative research—let alone, for discriminating between transdisciplinary and non-transdisciplinary outcomes of those ventures—presently exist. Finally, the appropriate timeframe for assessing the scientific “returns on investment” or the “value-added” attributable to large-scale scientific collaborations has not been established. Identification of the scientific and public health benefits accruing from substantial investments in transdisciplinary scientific collaboration may require a broad historical timeframe spanning multiple years of even decades. See Rhoten (2003) and Stokols et al. (2003) for further discussion of these issues.

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Acknowledgments

Paper presented at the Society for Community Research and Action Working Conference on Interdisciplinary Collaboration, Vanderbilt University, May 21-22, 2004. The helpful comments of David Altman, Ken Maton, Doug Perkins and two anonymous reviewers on an earlier version of the paper are gratefully acknowledged. Development of this manuscript was supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIDA/NCI) to establish the UCI TTURC (NIH award #DA-13332).

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Stokols, D. Toward a Science of Transdisciplinary Action Research. Am J Community Psychol 38, 63–77 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10464-006-9060-5

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