Vishnu Subrahmanyam, PhD candidate, and Dr. Elise Smith publish groundbreaking work on "attentiveness" as a methodological approach for including community partners in health research
A new publication from researchers at UTMB's School of Public Health and Population Health (SPPH) offers valuable insights for researchers working with communities in health justice work. Vishnu Subrahmanyam, a third-year PhD candidate at the Institute for Bioethics and Health Humanities, and Dr. Elise Smith, Assistant Professor in the Department of Bioethics and Health Humanities, published their article "Attentiveness as a Methodological Approach for Including Community Partners in Qualitative Health Data Analysis" in the International Journal of Qualitative Methods.
Their research addresses a critical gap in community-based participatory research (CBPR): the frequent exclusion of community partners from qualitative data analysis despite their centrality to the research process.
Challenging Research Paradigms
The publication introduces "attentiveness" as a framework that transforms how researchers engage with community partners. This approach acknowledges the expertise that community members bring to research projects and challenges traditional power structures that have limited their participation.
"Attentiveness is just as simple as paying close attention to the conversations that are being had with and among community partners," explains Subrahmanyam. "As researchers, we often postpone attentiveness during the stage of data analysis, partly because we feel that expertise in research and knowledge rests solely with us."
This insight came from Subrahmanyam's own research experiences, where he recognized that "community partners might speak in a register different from academia, but these conversations are equally or more valuable than academic conversations."
An Ethical Imperative, Not Just Best Practice
Dr. Smith emphasizes that including community members in qualitative data analysis is an ethical necessity, not merely a preference or "good practice."
"It is an ethical imperative in community-based qualitative health research to include community members in qualitative data analysis to promote meaningful inclusion and epistemic justice," Dr. Smith explains. "Meaningful inclusion requires space for communities to reconfigure the process of research and the resulting knowledges."
Their work demonstrates how current research practices often limit community participation to specific, convenient phases—such as helping define research questions or assisting with participant recruitment—while excluding them from the critical data analysis phase.
Reshaping Power Dynamics in Research
The concept of attentiveness directly addresses imbalances of power between researchers and community partners. Subrahmanyam notes that "attentiveness considers localized community knowledge as equally credible and legitimate to academic forms of knowledge."
This approach helps "create an environment that offsets power dynamics" inherent in research relationships, allowing community partners to contribute to data analysis without being excluded due to perceived lack of expertise.
A Collaborative Effort
The article emerged from a term paper Subrahmanyam wrote for Dr. Smith's class on research ethics. "The real pleasure was in developing this term paper into a manuscript that was ready to publish," Subrahmanyam shares. "Dr. Smith helped me learn how to refine my argument and place it within the history of research ethics."
The publication reflects the collaborative environment fostered within the Department of Bioethics and Health Humanities. "The department of Bioethics and Health Humanities, especially Drs. Molldrem and Tumilty, have also helped provide significant feedback for developing the paper," notes Subrahmanyam.
This work offers valuable insights for researchers across disciplines who engage with communities in health-related research, providing a framework that challenges traditional research hierarchies and creates space for more ethical and inclusive approaches to knowledge production.
Find the full article "Attentiveness as a Methodological Approach for Including Community Partners in Qualitative Health Data Analysis" in International Journal of Qualitative Methods.