An examination of how to engage migrants in the research process: building trust through an 'insider' perspective

Introduction: Ensuring all members of society can equally participate in research and the provision of services is a challenging goal. Increased migration has been mirrored by media narratives of social threat, leaving many migrants feeling differentiated and distrustful of mainstream society.Objectives: We explore how migrant and ethnic minority populations can be given the opportunity to participate in the research process. In this work, we iteratively and jointly developed a range of engagement strategies that adopt an 'insider' approach; seeking to eliminate feelings of differentiation and 'otherness' by establishing mutual trust.Design: Recruitment activities were carried out with 8 focus groups of first-generation South Asian migrants (the largest ethnic minority group in England). Our analysis was grounded in the broad principles of action research with reflective evaluation of our recruitment process using field observations and relevant focus group data; asking whether we tackled barriers to engagement.Results: Our findings show that 'otherness' can be reduced by establishing a trustworthy researcher-community relationship, but also that this relationship is complex, and needs to acknowledge residual mistrust. Alongside, researchers need to enable opportunities for empowered interaction, with flexible strategies to negotiate potential power divides.Conclusions: We can successfully create opportunities for engagement but there is no 'one size fits all'. Engagement requires tailored approaches that embrace flexibility, and position both engagement and non-engagement as positive and empowered choices.

"Unheard minds, again and again": autistic insider perspectives and theory of mind

PURPOSE

The Theory of Mind (ToM) deficit hypothesis is a dominant construct used to explain the social and communication difficulties observed in autistic individuals. This hypothesis was based on an interpretation of autistic individuals' observable behavior, not based on insider accounts. Insider perspectives still remain mostly absent in research on ToM. We aimed to gain an understanding of the relevance and applicability of ToM by examining writings of autistic bloggers.

METHODS

As part of a series of studies examining insider autistic perspectives, we used a descriptive qualitative approach and conducted a thematic analysis of content scraped from 40 blogs written by autistic authors.

RESULTS

The blogs offered important perspectives on the applicability of ToM to autistic individuals. The primary themes reflected empirical contradictions to ToM, explicit critiques of ToM, and pointed to ToM as a source of harm.

CONCLUSION

The insider perspectives call into question the ways clinicians, researchers, and society use ToM to understand autistic individuals and point to the harmful effects of ToM on autistic lived experience. These findings emphasize the importance of attending to autistic people in building a body of knowledge that better reflects autistic experiences and promotes more effective and ethical clinical practices.Implications for RehabilitationOur paper indicates the need for a timely and thorough re-evaluation of the ToM deficit hypothesis of autism.Autistic insider perspectives not only empirically demonstrate and explicitly critique the ToM deficit hypothesis, but reveal the hypothesis as harmful to autistic experience by reinforcing negative stereotypes, prompting acts of discrimination, and perpetuating autistic insider's exclusion from the research concerning them.Given the varied experiences of autistic people and the harmful impacts of the ToM deficit hypothesis, it is safer for clinicians and researchers to presume a presence of ToM and empathy, before they presume a deficit in autistic individuals.Autistic insiders are able, eager, and deserve to be included in the research and practices that concern them.