Bringing an equity-centered framework to research: Transforming the researcher, research content, and practice of research

Abstract

Since the mainstream racial awakening to pervasive and entrenched structural racism, many organizations have made commitments and adopted practices to increase workplace diversity, inclusion, and equity and embed these commitments in their organizational missions. A question often arises about how these concepts apply to research. This paper discusses how organizations can build on their specific commitments to diversity, inclusion, and equity by applying these principles in the research enterprise. RTI International’s framework for conducting equity-centered transformative research highlights how incorporating principles of diversity, inclusion, and equity requires a departure from mainstream practice because of historical and intentional exclusion of these principles. Drawing on methodologies of culturally responsive evaluation, research, and pedagogy; feminist, Indigenous, and critical methodologies; community-based participatory research; and theories of social transformation, liberation, and racial justice, this organizing framework illustrates what this departure requires and how research can serve liberation and social justice by transforming the researcher, the research content, and the day-to-day practice of conducting research. Centering the work of seminal scholars and practitioners of color in the field, this paper provides a holistic framework that incorporates various research approaches and paradigms intended to shift power to minoritized and marginalized communities to achieve social transformation through research.