We had a session with Dr. Duna Sabri on Wednesday 12th of January. The focal point of discussion was : “Researching on your Own institution”.

Question to be asked why research on your own institution? We have been asked to do a poll and surprisingly a small number of attendees voted for No . Looked like majority of attendees opted for an yes answer entitling them to conduct research in their own organisation.

Duna was not surprised but she did surprise us by mentioning, perhaps after round of in-group discussions, we might shift our view on the topic. For sure this made me to loop in and be even more curious for the session.

To give you a clearer background I would like to let you know , interestingly I was on the majority group by opting for a yes answer. As a researcher you wonder why sometimes you ruled into such decision. However as I voted yet it occurred to me I did not question myself on the nature of research question and they type of research I would be conducting as an insider on my own institution.

We have been grouped to discuss several scenarios including the outcome of the educational quality and the delivery of the education, and even more so the topic for sure was leaning towards the value of social justice and making sure you re-address educational gap attainment through researching your own institution.

During the session we were broken into smaller BBcolab groups . The majority of session majority of topics were hovering over value and importance of social justice in Higher education and role of other sub topics including but not limited to :

  • Bias;
  • Lack of diversity;
  • Lack of managerial support for research;
  • Institutional culture;

Interestingly the more we discussed the matter the more it became obvious there is no right or wrong answer to conduct research on your own institute when it comes to sensitive issues like Social justice in higher education. In particular in our inner group discussion, our group came to conclusion that it all depends on research question and access to data . Aspects regarding validity and reliability for sure played a role. Furthermore we agreed quantitative research conducted on other institute for certain topics could be as effective as an internal research conducted by the institute itself, however this would very much depends on the subject area and the nature of the research question, level of sensitivity surrounding it.

Other topics we did discuss which stirred good discussions all through out in our group , was the scenario when research team has come up with a finding that does not contradict the institutional perception , yet they do not seem to see the urgency of institutional change. Questions being asked was how would you convince the organization for a positive change.

In our discussion we all came to conclusion that organisational cultural norms and beliefs and managerial commitment would be a key point in creating a positive shift towards right direction.

Overall in this session we discussed it is important to eliminate or minimise the source of bias .

Bias can impact qualitative type of research more than quantitative and data driven research due to its nature, and even more so on ethnographic types of research which is naturally more prone to nature of human bias. One way to deal with this could be conducting a survey not necessarily limited to own organisation and comparing result.

Other issues we discussed is managerial commitment.

In the end of the session we were asked again to vote for a : Yes vs. No and to reflect on the feasibility of conducting research in your own institution.

Interestingly this time around I decided to vote for a No . On reflection this might be due to my research own discipline as a quantitative researcher. One aspect of this process is to reflect on the bias , both from research and observational perspective. Once reflecting I would say the answer most probably neither a yes or a no but a probably contingency factor. It well depends on research question, methodology being applied to eliminate bias and the way institutes take responsibilities to conduct and attend to these sensitive issue.

in the end I can only say thank you Dunna for such intersting and immersive experience and opening our eyes to such important issues.

relevant further reading for this sessions were:

Arday, J. and Mirza, S.F. (eds) (2018) Dismantling Race in Higher Education
– especially Part III ‘Outsiders Within the Academcy: Surviving the ‘Sheer Weight of Whiteness’
• Gellner, D. N. and Hirsch, E. (Eds) (2001) Inside Organizations:
Anthropologists at work ;

• Watson, D. and Maddison, E. (2005) Institutional Self-Study – for a
management take and ideas on using existing data sets.

The Youtube video was accessed on 20 Jan 2022: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7w2Gv7ueOc

Further reading on the topic: