Equitable Research Partnerships Toolkit: Introduction
Partnerships of all types have become increasingly popular in higher education, especially since the United Nations embraced the notion in its sustainable development agenda. Universities are increasingly expected to conduct research in collaboration with international partners, as well as utilising other types of partnerships. These alliances can help optimise knowledge creation and impact, strengthen research capacity, and improve the quality and relevance of research.
Numerous research funders, particularly in the United Kingdom, have responded to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by creating initiatives to support international research partnerships. Equity is key to these initiatives. If a research relationship is to have maximum impact, it should function on a fair and level playing field.
This ACU toolkit is a collection of practical resources to support analysis and action for addressing equity in research partnerships. It is informed by substantial research conducted with a range of equitable research partnership stakeholders and experts.
The toolkit looks to stimulate critical thinking and dialogue about what equity means, and what it might ‘look like’ in a research partnership, as well as suggesting practical actions that can be implemented to strengthen this. A growing body of guidelines and principles have called for increased equity in research partnerships but have to date provided little advice on how to translate these principles into actions. This toolkit looks to address this. Each tool comes with specific guidance on why, when and how to use it. Every tool is designed to help establish or enhance equity within a research partnership.
The toolkit is designed to be used by all researchers working in partnership. It has a special focus on international (Global North and South) partnerships. However, many of the tools are relevant for other types of partnership in which there are potential inequities between partners (such as multidisciplinary, transdisciplinary, public-private, South-South). The tools may also be adapted to examine equity in terms of characteristics, for example gender or race.
The tools featured here utilise social science methods of generating and organising information. However, you do not need to be a social scientist to use them. Each tool comes with detailed instructions, and many of them include templates for collecting and organising data. The tools are designed to be easily used by researchers with no previous experience of collecting information from people or of partnership equity.
Section 1: Building understanding and awareness
Building understanding and awareness of how different partners think about equity, as well as the research problem and approach, is an essential foundation for developing an equitable research partnership. The tools in this section are designed to facilitate dialogues that build understanding and awareness of different ways of thinking about equity and the equity implications of different approaches to doing research.
The toolkit includes four tools designed to build understanding and awareness:
Tool 1 - Equity café
Tool 2 - Recognising and assessing assumptions
Tool 3 - Multiple perspectives on equity
Tool 4 - Matrix ranking
Section 2: Stakeholder identification and analysis
Stakeholder analysis tools are designed to help researchers think about the range of individuals and institutions that might participate in a research partnership, as well as how and why they might participate. Stakeholder analysis is an important early step in a research partnership. It may be conducted by a single partner who would like to establish a partnership or an initial group of partners, who wish to identify other possible collaborators or assess the equity of inclusion in the partnership. However, stakeholder analysis is an iterative and ongoing process, that should ideally be conducted regularly, to account for the dynamic nature of partnerships and the contexts in which they are implemented.
The toolkit includes three stakeholder identification and analysis tools:
Tool 5 - Stakeholder assessment
Tool 6 - Partnership power dynamics assessment
Tool 7 - Skills and roles assessment
Section 3: Envisioning, achieving and assessing desired partnership impact
Research is increasingly expected to have a social impact, that is, lead to practical changes. Achieving this impact in Global North and South partnerships is an important part of equity. It encompasses using research results to influence policy and programmes designed to benefit communities in the global South, as well as using the research process to build equitable relations among research partners.
The toolkit includes three impact assessment tools:
Tool 8 - Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis
Tool 9 - Establishing a vision for the partnership
Tool 10 - Imagining and understanding impact
Section 4: Research study - design and implementation
Designing and implementing a study is the core work of a research partnership. The division of roles and responsibilities amongst partners in the design and implementation stage has important equity implications. Some roles, such as designing research methods or analysing and interpreting data, receive greater academic recognition and reward than other roles, such as recruiting participants and collecting data.
The toolkit includes five tools to promote equity in research study design and implementation:
Tool 11 - Emancipatory boundary critique
Tool 12 - Research costing tool
Tool 13 - Field Worker Ethical Reflection Workshops
Tool 14 - Research Partnership Agreement Template
Tool 15 - Intellectual property equity
Section 5: Monitoring, evaluation and learning
Monitoring and evaluation (M&E) are important in research partnerships. However, standard M&E frameworks might focus on the research process and outcomes. For researchers working in partnership, it is important to consciously develop and incorporate mechanisms for monitoring and evaluating the partnership process and its outcomes, and the equity of these.
The toolkit includes two tools i for monitoring and evaluating equity in the partnership:
Tool 16 - Theory of change co-development
Tool 17 - Partnership equity check
Section 6: Checklists
Checklists are tools that can be used to systematically assess progress and minimise the chances that important tasks or features are forgotten. In the research partnerships context, checklists help draw attention to features of a research partnership that influence equity.
The toolkit contains three checklists:
Tool 18 - Actioning the equitable research partnerships code of conduct checklist
Tool 19 - Participation in research checklist
Tool 20 - Partnership checklists for Global North and Global South academics
The toolkit is intended for flexible use by researchers working in different types, and at different stages, of partnerships. Partners can decide which tools to use and when. Different tools will be more and less appropriate for different partnerships. It is unlikely that any partnership will use all the tools. Many research partnerships will only have the resources to implement one or two.
In new partnerships, it might be useful to implement several of the planning tools, for example in a workshop setting. In existing partnerships, it may be better to select the tools that are most applicable to a specific issue, at a specific point in time.
The toolkit is not intended to create extra work. The tools are designed to facilitate systematic, participatory approaches to working on equity. The tools are also designed to create outputs that can be used to support claims of equity in things like funding applications and progress reports.
Many of the tools are designed to be customised by the users. For example, researchers using the tools might be asked to determine the assessment criteria to be used in different tools, or for ideas of questions to be posed in a discussion. Examples and suggestions are always provided, to assist researchers in thinking through how to adapt the tools to the specifics of their partnership.
It is important to use the tools with the awareness that some partners will feel more able to contribute to discussions than others. The intent to foster mutual learning and understanding, and a commitment to enhancing equity, will also go a long way. Creating spaces in which people feel safe and confident to share their ideas and concerns is a prerequisite for using the toolkit effectively. It is also an important step in working towards equity in a research partnership.
Rapid and intensive tool use options
Many of the tools are designed to be used in group settings such as workshops, to promote reflective thinking about equity in different stages of research partnerships, and how inequities might be minimised. However, group meetings are not always feasible, particularly in the early stages of partnership formation, where there may be no funding to cover the costs of examining equity. Many of the tools can be used rapidly by individual researchers or a subset of research partners. Suggestions for rapid and intensive applications of tools are provided.
Face-to-face and virtual options
Most of the tools can be used either in face-to-face or virtual settings. Suggestions are provided for implementing tools using both formats.
How many tools to use will depend on the characteristics of the research partnership. All of the tools can be used independently of the others. Using a single tool to think about equity in the partnership can be valuable. Using every tool in the toolkit is unlikely to be feasible or valuable.
The tools are intended to facilitate thinking about equity in four stages of a research partnership.
Many of the tools can be used at multiple stages of the partnership process. However, the value of using the tools in the planning stage of research cannot be over emphasised. Planning is a key stage for addressing equity because it is normally the stage when important decisions are made about things like roles, responsibilities, study design and data ownership.
All toolkit content is © Association of Commonwealth Universities 2023. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence.