Capital Dissemination Posted on July 24, 2007 Understanding the needs of the population is an essential part of recruitment, states Christopher L. Edwards (bio).

One of the things that is often very helpful in terms of capital dissemination is understanding the needs of the church. For example, if I’m doing studies on pain, but in fact, the congregation that I’m trying to recruit from has pain and diabetes, then in fact, I may have some obligation to bring resources related to diabetes.

I may, in fact, need to do that as a way of effectively making sure that the relationship is mutual and not exploitative, that they are getting just as much as I’m getting. And so health fairs are often a good way of making those kinds of interactions with churches. Speeches, conferences, organizational meetings, all of those things become important in terms of demonstrating that you have a genuine commitment to the population, rather than just [to] your vitae.

And that is often the concern that churches and other organizations have about researchers. And that is, we come; we come only to serve our vitas, to establish our careers. And then we go and leave those who assisted us to build those careers, behind. And so it is important in terms of capital dissemination that we go back and we talk to those populations, that we actually interact with those populations, and that we make sure that they know that they are valued and we could not have done that research without their participation.

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