Doing Research with Newcomers - ensuring it is meaningful and inclusive

This guide was developed by the Hamilton Immigration Partnership Council (HIPC). It is based on a report conducted in partnership with McMaster University Research Shop. This Good Idea complements and is related to Ethical Considerations in Research with People in Situations of Forced Migration.

Why it was needed

From the report: "HIPC and its members are regularly approached by researchers from local and regional post-secondary institutions to assist with recruiting newcomers for their studies. Research, when done well, can lead to policy changes, new programs or services, and other opportunities to improve settlement and integration for Hamilton’s newcomer communities. However, when approached with limited cultural awareness, insensitivity to lived experiences, or unrealistic expectations, research with newcomers can unintentionally be harmful to or unpleasant for those involved. Many newcomers face barriers in their settlement experiences, often in the form of limited work experience, unrecognized job credentials and poor language proficiency. Therefore, it is important the research community works to remove these as opposed to reinforces them.

To help prepare prospective researchers for their interactions with the newcomer community and service providers, HIPC has collaborated with the McMaster Research Shop to create this guide. We draw inspiration from similar guides created for communities experiencing frequent researcher-newcomer interactions, such as Vancouver’s “Research 101: A Manifesto for Ethical Research in the Downtown Eastside.” Our goal was to gather local perspectives on how researchers can treat newcomer communities with the respect and decency they deserve, and how the
research process be improved for those involved."

Defining meaningful and inclusive

Meaningful research focuses on what’s important to the community. The goal is for the research to have a positive impact.

Inclusive research is when all members of the target population are given a chance to participate. Researchers put supports in place to make sure this happens.

Doing Research with Newcomers created three guides:

For Newcomers - provides them with information about common practices and your their if they decide to participate in research. Sections include:

• Your rights as a research participant
• As a research participant, you have the right to get the answers to these questions from researchers.
• You may also ask researchers if they will

For Researchers - a guide to inclusive and meaningful research with newcomers. Sections include:

• Why this guide?
• Researchers should be able to answer these questions:
• Checklist for Researchers

For Service Providers - A Guide to Inclusive and Meaningful Research with Newcomers: Intake Form. This intake form was designed to assist community and service provider organizations when approached by researchers wanting to build partnerships or to recruit newcomer participants for their studies. It is a fillable PDF form you can ask researchers to complete when they approach you about a potential research project. You could also extract the questions and put them into a Word or other document.

Download the HIPC Newcomers Guide.