IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v126y2015icp17-25.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Interdisciplinary promises versus practices in medicine: The decoupled experiences of social sciences and humanities scholars

Author

Listed:
  • Albert, Mathieu
  • Paradis, Elise
  • Kuper, Ayelet

Abstract

This paper explores social scientists' and humanities (SSH) scholars' integration within the academic medical research environment. Three questions guided our investigation: Do SSH scholars adapt to the medical research environment? How do they navigate their career within a culture that may be inconsistent with their own? What strategies do they use to gain legitimacy? The study builds on three concepts: decoupling, doxa, and epistemic habitus. Twenty-nine semi-structured interviews were conducted with SSH scholars working in 11 faculties of medicine across Canada. Participants were selected through purposeful and snowball sampling. The data were analyzed by thematic content analysis. For most of our participants, moving into medicine has been a challenging experience, as their research practices and views of academic excellence collided with those of medicine. In order to achieve some level of legitimacy more than half of our participants altered their research practices. This resulted in a dissonance between their internalized appreciation of academic excellence and their new, altered, research practices. Only six participants experienced no form of challenge or dissonance after moving into medicine, while three decided to break with their social science and humanities past and make the medical research community their new home. We conclude that the work environment for SSH scholars in faculties of medicine does not deliver on the promise of inclusiveness made by calls for interdisciplinarity in Canadian health research.

Suggested Citation

  • Albert, Mathieu & Paradis, Elise & Kuper, Ayelet, 2015. "Interdisciplinary promises versus practices in medicine: The decoupled experiences of social sciences and humanities scholars," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 17-25.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:126:y:2015:i:c:p:17-25
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.12.004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027795361400793X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.12.004?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rosenfield, Patricia L., 1992. "The potential of transdisciplinary research for sustaining and extending linkages between the health and social sciences," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 35(11), pages 1343-1357, December.
    2. Albert, Mathieu & Laberge, Suzanne & Hodges, Brian D. & Regehr, Glenn & Lingard, Lorelei, 2008. "Biomedical scientists' perception of the social sciences in health research," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 66(12), pages 2520-2531, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kyoo‐Man Ha, 2016. "Facilitating Redundancy‐Oriented Management with Gene‐Therapy‐Oriented Management Against Disaster," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 36(6), pages 1262-1276, June.
    2. Jan Činčera & Grzegorz Mikusiński & Bohuslav Binka & Luis Calafate & Cristina Calheiros & Alexandra Cardoso & Marcus Hedblom & Michael Jones & Alex Koutsouris & Clara Vasconcelos & Katarzyna Iwińska, 2019. "Managing Diversity: The Challenges of Inter-University Cooperation in Sustainability Education," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(20), pages 1-16, October.
    3. Albert, Mathieu & Laberge, Suzanne, 2017. "Confined to a tokenistic status: Social scientists in leadership roles in a national health research funding agency," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 185(C), pages 137-146.
    4. Greenhalgh, Trisha & Engebretsen, Eivind, 2022. "The science-policy relationship in times of crisis: An urgent call for a pragmatist turn," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 306(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jian Xu & Yi Bu & Ying Ding & Sinan Yang & Hongli Zhang & Chen Yu & Lin Sun, 2018. "Understanding the formation of interdisciplinary research from the perspective of keyword evolution: a case study on joint attention," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 117(2), pages 973-995, November.
    2. de Jong, Stefan P.L. & Wardenaar, Tjerk & Horlings, Edwin, 2016. "Exploring the promises of transdisciplinary research: A quantitative study of two climate research programmes," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 45(7), pages 1397-1409.
    3. Lezlie Morinière, 2012. "Environmentally Influenced Urbanisation: Footprints Bound for Town?," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 49(2), pages 435-450, February.
    4. Wallace, Matthew L. & Ràfols, Ismael, 2018. "Institutional shaping of research priorities: A case study on avian influenza," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 47(10), pages 1975-1989.
    5. Albert, Mathieu & Laberge, Suzanne, 2017. "Confined to a tokenistic status: Social scientists in leadership roles in a national health research funding agency," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 185(C), pages 137-146.
    6. Gaetano R. Lotrecchiano & L. Michelle Bennett & Yianna Vovides, 2023. "A framework for developing team science expertise using a reflective-reflexive design method (R2DM)," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 10(1), pages 1-12, December.
    7. Jovanovic, Franck & Schinckus, Christophe, 2017. "Econophysics and Financial Economics: An Emerging Dialogue," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780190205034, Decembrie.
    8. Corrine Nöel Knapp & Robin S. Reid & María E. Fernández-Giménez & Julia A. Klein & Kathleen A. Galvin, 2019. "Placing Transdisciplinarity in Context: A Review of Approaches to Connect Scholars, Society and Action," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(18), pages 1-25, September.
    9. Tomohiko Sakao, 2019. "Research Series Review for Transdisciplinarity Assessment—Validation with Sustainable Consumption and Production Research," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(19), pages 1-22, September.
    10. Ssengooba, Freddie & McPake, Barbara & Palmer, Natasha, 2012. "Why performance-based contracting failed in Uganda – An “open-box” evaluation of a complex health system intervention," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 75(2), pages 377-383.
    11. Rock, Melanie & Buntain, Bonnie J. & Hatfield, Jennifer M. & Hallgrímsson, Benedikt, 2009. "Animal-human connections, "one health," and the syndemic approach to prevention," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 68(6), pages 991-995, March.
    12. Tracy Klarenbeek & Nelius Boshoff, 2018. "Measuring multidisciplinary health research at South African universities: a comparative analysis based on co-authorships and journal subject categories," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 116(3), pages 1461-1485, September.
    13. Mario Karlovčec & Dunja Mladenić, 2015. "Interdisciplinarity of scientific fields and its evolution based on graph of project collaboration and co-authoring," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 102(1), pages 433-454, January.
    14. Kerstin Sell & Franziska Hommes & Florian Fischer & Laura Arnold, 2022. "Multi-, Inter-, and Transdisciplinarity within the Public Health Workforce: A Scoping Review to Assess Definitions and Applications of Concepts," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(17), pages 1-23, September.
    15. Lawton, Ricky N. & Rudd, Murray A., 2013. "Crossdisciplinary research contributions to the United Kingdom′s National Ecosystem Assessment," Ecosystem Services, Elsevier, vol. 5(C), pages 149-159.
    16. Arnold, Austin & Cafer, Anne & Green, John & Haines, Seena & Mann, Georgianna & Rosenthal, Meagen, 2021. "“Perspective: Promoting and fostering multidisciplinary research in universities”," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(9).
    17. Matilda Annerstedt, 2010. "Transdisciplinarity as an Inference Technique to Achieve a Better Understanding in the Health and Environmental Sciences," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 7(6), pages 1-16, June.
    18. Clare E.B. Cannon, 2020. "Towards Convergence: How to Do Transdisciplinary Environmental Health Disparities Research," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(7), pages 1-23, March.
    19. Murat Sartas & Piet van Asten & Marc Schut & Mariette McCampbell & Moureen Awori & Perez Muchunguzi & Moses Tenywa & Sylvia Namazzi & Ana Sole Amat & Graham Thiele & Claudio Proietti & Andre Devaux & , 2019. "Factors influencing participation dynamics in research for development interventions with multi-stakeholder platforms: A metric approach to studying stakeholder participation," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(11), pages 1-20, November.
    20. Dominic Villeneuve & David Durán-Rodas & Anthony Ferri & Tobias Kuttler & Julie Magelund & Michael Mögele & Luca Nitschke & Eriketti Servou & Cat Silva, 2019. "What is Interdisciplinarity in Practice? Critical Reflections on Doing Mobility Research in an Intended Interdisciplinary Doctoral Research Group," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(1), pages 1-20, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:126:y:2015:i:c:p:17-25. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.