What's Another Word for “Ruling Relations”?: Translating IE Research to Community, Government and Academics in Medicine

This presentation highlights the work of using institutional ethnography (IE) in applied health research. I illustrate how my IE study on fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) both facilitated and complicated the process of knowledge translation (KT). I will discuss this in the context of KT with diverse audiences including community stakeholders, government policy and decision makers, and academics in medicine.  It is the work of research to contain and limit the amount of data to collect and analyze in order to keep a study focused.  Applied health research also commonly includes KT plans to strategically engage target audiences with meaningful research findings.  As an applied health researcher, I considered each primary audience as I decided how and what data to analyze as well as how the findings would be disseminated.

The purpose of this IE study was to examine how institutional supports and services are activated and coordinated around youth with an FASD diagnosis. My study included in two Canadian communities – one remote Aboriginal community and the other an urban provincial capital.  In each setting, three distinct groups were interviewed: 1) caregivers of children with an FASD diagnoses; 2) front line workers from healthcare, child welfare, education and social services with direct involvement in the lives of children with an FASD diagnosis; and 3) policy and decision makers who manage the interviewed frontline staff.  In addition to interviews, I collected and analyzed clinical and service-related forms, training manuals, policies and assessments.  This large volume of data required focus and prioritization in order to produce results that meet the expectations of my three main target audiences: community, government, and academics.  I argue that the utility of IE in applied research is only as strong as the ability of the researcher to “speak IE” in a language that can be understood.