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Research and Dissemination in Indian Country: Indianonish, Email, and Other Surprises

About the Webcast

Spirit Lake Consulting, Inc. has been conducting applied research on reservations in the Great Plains for 20 years. Recent projects include development and empirical validation of two computer-integrated training projects: Caring for Our People, a staff training on care for Native Americans with disabilities and chronic illness and Disability Access, a training for people with disabilities and their families.

This three-part presentation focuses first on false assumptions and cultural differences that prevent effective research and dissemination on Indian reservations. These pitfalls are common to both new and experienced researchers. In short, a true experimental design is seldom a valid method for research on reservations. Standard methods of recruitment of subjects don’t work, and researchers’ views of the benefits of their work differ vastly from the opinions held by most reservation residents.

The second part of the presentation discusses modifications to typical research designs to effectively work on Indian reservations. These include budgets for personnel residing on the reservation studied; flexibility to re-schedule, often at the last minute; timelines that allow for repeated notices of planned events; multi-method recruitment and the need to recruit far more subjects than required by the research design.

The third part of the presentation summarizes the research by Spirit Lake Consulting on the means by which individuals with disabilities and their families obtain information. Recommendations are made for the application of these findings to recruitment of subjects for research and dissemination of research findings.

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