Like all academic researchers, behavioral scientists conducting—or hoping to conduct—international collaborative research work within a context of multiple academic entities, including their universities; the schools, colleges, and administrative units that compose those institutions; and other entities such as professional societies, journals, and funding agencies. Session 1 of the workshop focused on elements of this infrastructure that might facilitate international collaborations. “Research collaborations are not done in a vacuum [but] as part of what’s going on in institution[s] as a whole,” said Robin Helms, senior research specialist at the Center for Internationalization and Global Engagement of the American Council on Education (ACE). Each type of entity can, through its various policies and practices, help or hinder international research efforts, she added.
Even when those policies and procedures have no obvious or intended connection to international work, they often nonetheless create obstacles. Merry Bullock, senior director, Office of International Affairs, American Psychological Association, noted that because of this many investigators find the academic environment inhospitable to international collaborations and see a need to change the culture in academia. Many, in fact, even share the sense that this is nearly impossible to accomplish.
The 2006 workshop identified a number of obstacles that were very specific to disciplines and methodological in nature, noted Helms. Equally important are broader and more generally applicable barriers that institutions can modify or remove. Institutional support needs to become the norm and not the exception in international research efforts, added Bullock.
Bullock and other speakers and participants focused on how institutions can identify and strengthen components of their organizational infrastructure so that they foster, rather than discourage, collaborations. Potentially helpful elements, Bullock noted, exist and can be mobilized at every level of institutional organization: university-wide, in universities’ various individual schools or
colleges, in such university administrative units as international offices and institutional review boards (IRBs), and within outside entities such as professional organizations.
AT THE INSTITUTIONAL LEVEL IN HIGHER EDUCATION
Three important barriers to international collaboration affect faculty members across many disciplines and institutions, and therefore efforts by university-wide leadership can help realign policies to mitigate them, Helms said. The first is relatively simple and straightforward: many faculty members have not thought about the possibility of collaborating internationally. If their research agenda is progressing and does not already involve an international component, international involvement may not occur to them.
Second, and far more formidable, is the task of finding appropriate international collaborators. Even faculty who are interested in working internationally may not know how to begin doing so and to find a qualified collaborator, Helms said.
The third barrier that Helms presented, a valid concern of faculty members, is that international work may conflict with the requirements of attaining tenure or promotion. Sonia Suchday, professor of psychology, Pace University, commented that, depending on an institution’s policies, collaborative international work can be costly to one’s career.
For example, the many complexities involved in organizing international projects often require long lead-up times that can result in time, money, and effort lost if faculty pursue collaborative projects that do not work out, Helms explained. With the tenure clock ticking, any unproductive false start could prevent a faculty member from compiling the publication record needed to win tenure or promotion. Beyond that, tenure rules sometimes prioritize single authorship, thereby implicitly discouraging international collaborations that often lead to joint publications.
Suchday commented that institutions need to build infrastructure, support networks, and awareness of what international collaboration requires. For that reason, Helms noted, the ACE recommends that universities aiming to increase their international activities undertake a policy of “comprehensive internationalization, [defined] as a strategic, coordinated process that seeks to align and integrate policies, programs, and initiatives to position colleges and universities as more globally oriented and internationally connected institutions.”
A crucial part of any institutional internationalization strategy would be to consider international background and experience at the hiring phase. Helms noted a growth in the number of institutions considering these factors in hiring faculty in nonexplicitly international fields. She referred to a 2011 ACE survey
that found that 68 percent of surveyed institutions are doing this, more than double the 32 percent reported in 2006.1
Another fruitful approach is providing even modest funding to allow faculty to attend international conferences or organize meetings where they can make initial personal contacts with potential collaborators, Helms continued. Universities can also strengthen the infrastructure for collaboration by having clear and well-publicized processes for faculty to establish formal partnerships. A searchable database of existing faculty collaborations can help those considering new ones.
Most crucial, however, is to adjust tenure and promotion guidelines to foster international collaborations, even though changing these policies can be contentious, Helms said. Institutions can also examine the unintended consequences of their current policies, such as those for single authorship mentioned above. However, it is even more important for an institution to take the further step of explicitly rewarding international engagement. The 2011 ACE survey, Helms noted, found that only 8 percent of institutions use international engagement as a tenure or promotion criterion, up only 2 percentage points since 2001.2
AT THE LEVEL OF COLLEGES AND DEPARTMENTS WITHIN UNIVERSITIES
Making international collaboration part of a university’s culture requires means of supporting it at the level of the institution’s various colleges, according to Carole Ames, professor emerita of educational psychology and former dean of the College of Education at Michigan State University. International work must be a central element of the dean’s vision that permeates a college’s administrative infrastructure. This requires building capacity within the college and harmonizing the college’s practices and policies with that goal. Deans can prioritize internationalization in both policy and budgeting and communicate that priority to both faculty and external funders, she said. To change institutional culture, it is best to start with practices rather than policies, she advised. Once internationalization becomes a big part of the culture, faculty members are likely to push for policies to follow.
Giving a specific office within the college responsibility for functions related to international research collaborations creates a central place for faculty wanting to participate in or learn about international collaborations, she continued. Building international capacity within a college entails funding faculty travel and sending faculty, especially early-career faculty, to
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1American Council on Education (ACE). Mapping Internationalization on U.S. Campuses: 2012 edition (June 2012), 14.
2ACE. Mapping Internationalization on U.S. Campuses, 14.
international conferences even if they do not make presentations. International study trips are valuable opportunities to learn about research approaches used in other countries and to begin to network. Graduate students also need support for training and travel in order to understand and conduct international collaborations.
Ames gave an example from her tenure as dean of Michigan State’s College of Education. The college sponsored faculty-led 3-week trips for graduate students to a country with a very different culture so that they could learn about that culture and its educational policies. These trips usually involved a host university where the visiting students could learn how the country’s scholars approached research. Such travel is also crucial for both students and faculty to develop the attitudes and skills that compose intercultural competence. This essential requirement for effective international work is best developed experientially, through living contact with differing cultures. College- or departmental-organized travel programs such as Ames described can greatly facilitate students’ and faculty members’ intercultural learning.
Along these lines, many workshop participants mentioned that intercultural competence, the ability to function effectively in a culture or cultures other than one’s own, is considered crucial to successful international collaborations. Providing opportunities for students and early-career scholars to acquire the attitudes, understanding, and skills that compose intercultural competence is therefore an important part of preparing them for international research. Institutional and organizational infrastructure devoted to this purpose can assist in making those opportunities available. Martyn Barrett, emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom, presented a detailed framework that is summarized in Box 2-1, The Components of Intercultural Competence.
Ames described ongoing seminars offered by Michigan State University. Investigators experienced in international collaboration introduce faculty and graduate students to the challenges of their collaborations, including various political and social issues, as well as to the means of negotiating and dealing with obstacles. These seminars also create opportunities for young faculty members to find senior scholars who could serve as mentors in their international efforts.
OTHER INSTITUTIONAL ENTITIES IN HIGHER EDUCATION
Other university entities, including IRBs and international offices, can also play key roles in fostering international collaborations. IRBs are particularly crucial because protection of human subjects is a central value, especially in U.S.-funded behavioral science research. Obtaining ethical approval from the appropriate IRB for a proposed study is therefore an essential step in developing projects, whether international or domestic.
At many institutions, however, the intention to work with foreign colleagues or in foreign countries can greatly complicate this process. Imposing U.S. procedures and assumptions on research populations in other cultures can lower the possibility of success. In a number of other countries, participants noted, notions such as what constitutes consent and who can give it differ from those in the United States. Applying procedures that meet overall U.S. goals while being appropriate to the cultural context of the collaborators or research participants, on the other hand, can go a long way toward overcoming these difficulties.
The 2008 workshop report highlighted three specific obstacles that IRBs can place in the way of international research, noted Sangeeta Panicker, director of research ethics at the American Psychological Association, during the breakout session on issues relating to IRBs. The first is that IRBs often focus on consent as a document, not as a process. Second, IRBs may pay insufficient attention to confidentiality, especially in light of rapidly changing communication technologies. This risk exists in all research today, not just international projects, but international work can add additional issues, she said. Third, IRBs may impose unnecessary delays that do not result in improved research. In recent years, however, some IRBs have moved forward in finding appropriate solutions.
Based on experience at University Hospitals Case Medical Center (an affiliate of Case Western Reserve University), where he serves as vice president of research, Philip Cola presented one such improved approach to resolving these issues to the IRB breakout session.
At any one time, Cola said, Case Medical Center’s IRB, which often simultaneously supervises 3,000 active protocols, may also be handling 60–70 active research protocols that, although done outside of the United States, are funded by a U.S. entity. He noted that the IRB’s philosophy in looking at human subject protections should start with collaboration, a theme of this workshop. The goal is for researchers to view the IRB not as administrators, but as colleagues and fellow scientists qualified to review the research. In addition to meeting technical standards of competence to review all kinds of research, IRBs need to be collaborative.
Under the traditional model of interaction between researchers and IRBs, Panicker noted, the researcher submits a protocol in written form. IRB members read the document and go back to the researcher with questions. This makes the researcher’s original draft the basis of discussions and can therefore make the interaction somewhat adversarial rather than collaborative.
A much better mechanism for effective collaboration, Panicker and Cola agreed, is for researchers and the IRB to cooperate in the cocreation of the protocol. Though this collaborative approach is not yet typical everywhere for IRB relations with investigators, Cola said, Case Medical Center uses it by encouraging face-to-face interactions between researchers and the IRB. At Case
Box 2-1
The Components of Intercultural Competence
The components of intercultural competence include attitudes, knowledge and understanding, skills, and actions. The following list of those attributes derives from five decades of scholarly research, is intended to be indicative rather than exhaustive, and focuses on those components amenable to being developed through education.
The attitudes include
- Valuing cultural diversity and pluralism of views and practices.
- Respecting and being open to, curious about, and willing to learn from and about people who have different cultural orientations and perspectives from one’s own.
- Being willing to empathize with people who have different cultural affiliations from one’s own.
- Being willing to question what is usually taken for granted as “normal” according to one’s previously acquired experience.
- Being willing to tolerate ambiguity and uncertainty.
The knowledge and understanding that contribute to intercultural competence include
- Understanding the internal diversity and heterogeneity of all cultural groups.
- Awareness and understanding of one’s own and other people’s preconceptions, stereotypes, prejudices, and overt and covert discrimination.
- Understanding the influence of one’s own language and cultural affiliations on one’s experience of other people.
- Communicative awareness, including awareness of the fact that other peoples’ languages may express shared ideas in a unique way or express unique ideas difficult to access through one’s own language(s).
- Knowledge of the beliefs, values, practices, discourses, and products that may be used by people who have particular cultural orientations.
The skills involved in intercultural competence include
- Multiperspectivity—the ability to decenter from one’s own perspective and to take other people’s perspectives into consideration in addition to one’s own.
- Skills in interpreting other cultural practices, beliefs, and values and relating them to one’s own.
- Cognitive flexibility—the ability to change and adapt one’s way of thinking according to the context.
- Skills in critically evaluating and making judgments about cultural beliefs, values, practices, discourses, and products, including those associated with one’s own cultural affiliations.
- Skills of adapting one’s behavior to new cultural environments—for example, avoiding verbal and nonverbal behaviors that may be viewed as impolite.
- Linguistic, sociolinguistic, and discourse skills, including skills in managing breakdowns in communication.
- Plurilingual skills to meet the communicative demands of an intercultural encounter, such as use of more than one language.
- The ability to act as a “mediator” in intercultural exchanges, including skills in translating, interpreting, and explaining.
For an individual to be credited with intercultural competence, they must also apply their intercultural attitudes, knowledge, understanding, and skills through actions.
Relevant actions include
- Seeking opportunities to engage with people who have different cultural orientations and perspectives from one’s own.
- Interacting and communicating appropriately, effectively, and respectfully with people who have different cultural affiliations from one’s own.
- Cooperating with individuals who have different cultural orientations on shared activities and ventures, and constructing common views and perspectives.
- Challenging attitudes and behaviors (including speech and writing) that contravene human rights, and taking action to defend and protect the dignity and human rights of people regardless of their cultural affiliations.
This last action may entail any or all of the following actions:
- Expressing opposition when there are expressions of prejudice or acts of discrimination against individuals or groups;
- Challenging cultural stereotypes and prejudices;
- Encouraging positive attitudes toward the contributions to society made by individuals irrespective of their cultural affiliations; and
- Mediating in situations of cultural conflict.
Adapted and abridged from “Developing Intercultural Competence through Education,” by Martyn Barrett, Michael Byram, Ildikò Lázár, Pascale Mompoint-Gaillard, and Stavroula Philippou. Council of Europe, Secretariat General, Directorate of Democratic Citizenship and Participation. January 16, 2013.
Medical Center, the IRB staff holds open office hours for researchers who want to discuss projects that are in development, which allows projects to be cocreated, not created and then coamended. For both investigators and the IRB, this represents a real culture change.
When he began working on the IRB 18 years ago, Cola explained, it would not have allowed an investigator to come to “sacred” IRB meetings. Now, one comes to just about every meeting to answer questions about proposed protocols. Researchers are asked to leave when the board deliberates. This approach has succeeded in breaking down barriers so that the IRB can help researchers think through issues to improve data collection prospects. Case Medical Center uses the IRB in ways similar to the way they use peer review.
To gain the specific contextual information needed for international projects, the Case Medical Center IRB implemented a program of local context review, which provides the perspectives of the other culture or cultures, Cola continued. The IRB has sought out qualified people in the local area who come from all parts of the world and made them adjunct members of the IRB. Such people are offered a small stipend to be part of the group and comment when needed. For example, a nursing student from Uganda serving in this capacity helped make a project feasible by clarifying the unit of measure needed to explain a blood draw to Ugandan subjects. This local reviewer pointed out that many Ugandans would not understand cubic centimeters or teaspoons.
In another case, when an appropriate local reviewer for Papua New Guinea could not be found in Ohio to help with six or seven studies, the IRB contacted experts in that country and started collaborating with them, ultimately bringing them several times to the United States, where Case Medical Center taught them what the institution meant by responsible cognitive research. Most importantly, the visiting experts taught the IRB what responsible cognitive research meant within their own culture, where ways of gaining consent are very different, especially for women. To facilitate this arrangement, Case Medical Center ensured proper Internet connections and infrastructure for the Papua New Guinea experts, who acted essentially as members of the IRB doing the local context review.
Even though the standards used in different countries may differ in some respects, Cola continued, the principles of protecting subjects are the same. When investigators write in a protocol that the reason for doing something a certain way is to respect the culture and norms of the country in which they are researching, IRBs should accept that.
Another fruitful approach to expediting ethics review, Cola said, is to partner with other institutions whose IRBs meet recognized standards. Then, for
projects in which more than one of the institutions is involved, an approval by any partner IRB serves as approval by all.3
Other university entities, such as international offices, can also play major roles in supporting, advocating, and leveraging resources for collaborative research even if they are not explicitly involved in research, said Lee Sternberger, executive director of the Office of International Programs at James Madison University. International offices can be at the forefront of campus internationalization and can also assist with the collection of data. In addition, universities can advance this aim by joining international consortia that facilitate forming international partnerships. Sternberger described two such consortia: Worldwide Universities Network, which shares research dollars to support international research activities, and the International Network of Universities, a small organization with the theme of global citizenship (including environmental sustainability) that fosters undergraduate and graduate student exchanges, joint research, and other activities. International offices can also often help to identify both best practices and colleagues with similar interests in a particular culture, country, or region to advise on research. Exchanging Ph.D. candidates and pretenure faculty with universities abroad helps build capacity in both institutions and stimulate research relationships. In addition, as already noted, study-abroad programs can also be transformative learning opportunities for both students and faculty.
PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
Looking at other infrastructure, Bullock noted that professional associations and funders also have roles to play in facilitating international research. Journals and associations sometimes set policies governing authorship of publications that may inadvertently discourage international collaborations. Charles Super, professor of human development and pediatrics at the University of Connecticut, gave the example of publication guidelines requiring that if an article has more than six authors, only the first six are listed, followed by “et al.” If a research project has seven research sites with seven senior investigators and two graduate students, someone will be unhappy, he said. A workshop on publication policies for journal editors could aid in clarifying some policies and changing others, many participants agreed.
Professional associations can also strengthen the infrastructure for international collaborations. Such services as organizing international conferences and programs and supporting journals, databases, and directories provide researchers useful opportunities to identify and meet potential collaborators. Associations also provide informational resources and guidance
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3For more on IRBs, see National Research Council. Proposed Revisions to the Common Rule for the Protection of Human Subjects in the Behavioral and Social Sciences (Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2014). Available at http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=18614.
that help researchers understand and overcome the many, often unfamiliar, problems and issues that can arise in international collaborations. The American Psychological Association, for example, offers resources on the international section of its website, as do such organizations as the Social Psychology Network and the International Union of Psychological Science, which maintains a website called Psychology Resources Around the World.
